I have my digital cable loaded for bear with every premium channel, three dual-tuner DVRs, two bare receivers, an average of two PPV movies a week at $4 a pop, and thirty hours a week of recorded programs for time-shifting. That costs me roughly $200 a month. What would it cost with AppleTV?
The offerings just coming on the market are targeted at "average" usage, but the drivers of this technology are not average. I have hundreds of videotapes and thousands of CDs. If you try to restrict me to "average" habits and charge me $400 to do what I'm already doing, I won't switch - and if I don't switch, nobody I know switches, because they look to me for guidance. If I say AppleTV sucks, they don't even evaluate it.
I passed them, I just lost interest. The one where you have to lay the bridges and move the explosive barrels was probably the most fun I've ever had in a GTA mission.
And I miss my hydraulic jumpy cabs, dammit! I want hydraulic jumpy cabs! GTA4 better have them!
I like to have a game I can play IN ten hours, but FOR hundreds.
I'm back playing GTA: Vice City at the moment, because it was fun. It takes approximately FOUR HOURS to go from start to fully unlocked. Then I can spend days, weeks, months playing my own little games. Sure, I could be done in another few hours by doing the missions - but there are hidden packages, rampages, stunt jumps, taxi driver, vigilante, paramedic, not to mention using the road outside Leaf Links as a half-pipe with a PCJ-600. Once my taxicabs get hydraulics, that particular brand of fun literally occupies me for days.
GTA: San Andreas, I've actually never completed. I got sidetracked riding bikes around Mount Chilead, and I've sort of lost interest in the storyline. I keep starting it over, and I get to the part with the remote control planes and crap, and right around there I end up just riding bikes around the countryside again.
Oblivion? I've logged about three hundred hours in it since starting my last run, and I've yet to do any of the main quest. It amused me to be nearly a year of game time into it, and wander back into the Imperial prison to find Baurus still standing over the Emperor's corpse. (Then I did the Dark Brotherhood quests, which changed this. Pout.)
I like having the choice. Do I want to hammer through it in two or three days, or do I want to geek out on it for a year and a half? If I only get one of those choices, the game sucks.
> Microsoft wasn't competing with Unix. > Microsoft's market was the PC.
If we weren't competing, how did you lose?
> The link that you give points to the > economic advantages of using open-source.
The link that I give is current. The link that you give is eight years old. I tend to think telling lies NOW is more important than anything a business did eight years ago.
> It crashes, you made it, your fault.
Usually, we DIDN'T make what crashed. The user just doesn't know the difference between the Windows operating system and an application window.
> Not in the form that it has today
That's called "progress". It's good. You should try it sometime.
> It's more stable, faster, more reliable, and cheaper.
Only in the most shortsighted and limited ways. There are hidden costs with every flavor of UNIX.
> She can get a PC with Suse, Ubuntu, or Debian pre-installed.
That doesn't teach her how to use it.
> Every average Joe I know has a geek on the background > configuring and fixing things on Windows.
And not one single average Joe of your acquaintance runs Linux? Why doesn't that geek just set them up with Suse or Ubuntu or Debian? Is it possible this geek realises it would be a Bad Idea?
> I think that Linux will eventually win, because > it's more productive for corporations.
Ever run one?
Never mind, I already know the answer. If you had, you'd know just how wrong that statement is.
Notice that an open source effort "can muster more brains", but "the pool of talent... is limited". There are plenty of developers when you need them, but not enough when your competitors follow you into the open source world. And absolutely nowhere is it made clear to the potential open source business that you need to cover the entire support chain, because developers are paid out of the fees charged for other services.
So get off the high horse.
> Joe User just sees adware/viruses/trojans, > lots of crashes, and the price of Vista.
That's not really true. Most malware and crash reports are wrong; the user simply doesn't know the right word for what happened.
Which is another excellent example of the shadowy business practices coming from YOUR side of the fence.
> Vista was released November 2006.
The Vista interface was first shown publicly in 2003, long before XGL ever showed up, and far too soon after OSX 10.2 (in 2002) to have copied it.
> Are you trying to say to me that Windows does > things that Linux cannot?
Not exactly. I'm trying to say Linux doesn't do things that make real people's lives and jobs easier. Linux is instead largely consumed by a desire to run on older hardware and use fewer resources, because the people working on it are going "how about we use this old 486 SX/25?!" and then running `top` to see what the system load is. That's one thing when you're all drinking Red Bull and tequila, so you can high five each other and say "that's even better than your DX/33!" and quote Monty Python all night. That's a fun party game that you can play with your geek friends. I'd be happy to join you next time you guys are doing that, although I'm certain Microsoft contractors aren't invited.
But there is something very very wrong about suggesting that Shirley the housewife should be using it to do the tournament schedule for her bowling league because it runs on old hardware she has never seen (let alone owned) and has a really low number over HERE on this incomprehensible screen full of unfamiliar words.
> it's the overall experience that matters.
Actually, it's not. It's the experience in a very few key situations that matters. Most of the time, it doesn't really matter whether you're running Windows or Linux. But that last bit of the time is a big geekapalooza on Linux, where you have to race around asking dozens of mailing lists how to solve your problem, and then you come out the other end a conquering hero. On Windows, that last bit tends to be a few rapid searches leading to a KB article, and most of your co-workers don't even know what happened.
Which is the real key situation. The Linux jockey, someone like you or me, wants to be the conquering hero. We want to forge the path and pull out the weird esoteric knowledge that demonstrates our inherent superiority.
But Joe User is not inherently superior, and he knows it. He is just a regular guy. Joe User has one overriding goal every single day, and that goal is not to do anything TOO stupid where anyone else can see it. So Joe User really, honestly, PREFERS to have his situation end up with a search for a KB article that nobody ever sees him make.
I don't think the Linux community understands Joe User. I think they look at him and go "What? No, dude, seriously, it's not hard! See,
I generally advise people to give Vista a week before they start worrying about how many security dialogs they see. That first week is not normal usage, and you do a lot of administrative work on the system. Wait until you get the bulk of the configuration done, and then see how much security is nagging you.
In my experience, you spend three or four days getting nagged to death, and then all the bothersome dialogs just go away. But I'm biased.;)
> Wow, you conveniently snipped out my entire question > and selectively quoted me to sound like a moron.
Your question made you sound like a moron. I was trying to protect you from the inevitable embarrassment you would suffer once you realised how stupid the question was.
I'll give you a second chance to figure it out yourself. Of course, you can still demand that I lay the smackdown on you, but that's up to you.
> Microsoft manufactured OSes for PCs, not mainframes
Oh, so we chose the wrong market, is that it? It's interesting how Microsoft's disadvantages were by choice, but Linux's were just luck.
> If, the part that renders the GUI is not well writen, > it will cause crashes.
But regardless of how well it is written, the part that renders the GUI is not the GUI.
> But if I want the Vista GUI, I will have to buy Vista, > so there is a price.
It's still not part of the GUI. I keep asking you what's important in a GUI, and you keep dodging the question.
> An empirical fact from a Microsoft employee.
A fact is a fact. It doesn't matter where you get it, it's still a fact.
> Why it cannot be both?
I didn't say that. You said that. You said it was "like, not from". In actuality, it's both, but that sort of means you're wrong.
> Why? Don't you want to know?
It's not that I don't want to know. It's that the subtleties don't matter. Joe User doesn't give a tin shit in a wicker basket whether the thread scheduler uses a more efficient context switching algorithm. Sure, that's nice, and I'd love to see the performance difference - but I'm not going to do it with normal use. I'm going to do it with a throwaway driver that spawns hundreds of thousands of threads and monitors system load. But that's because I'm a GEEK, and I think this stuff is FUN. I am not and will never pretend to be a normal user.
> First, I remind you that OSX and XGL preceded > Vista.
Not really. Microsoft blathers endlessly about what we're doing. We understand that if you try to build it yourself and shove it on the market first, it will suck anyway, because you weren't smart enough to think of it yourself - so you're not going to be smart enough to build it yourself, either. We learned this from the open source community.
What about you guys? Learning anything from us? Oh... never mind. You're still doing the same things in the same ways and getting the same results. That's why I need to read the changelog to see what you did over the last two years.
> Second, XGL uses system resources way more efficiently.
Volume shadow copy lets you recover previous versions of documents you've changed.
So when your boss says "rewrite this whole presentation" and then comes back just after you save it and says "hey, get me the old presentation", you right-click and select "Restore Previous Versions", then pick the one you want.
That saves your ass way more efficiently.
Oh, but system resources are important, too. Just not to the boss.
> What kind of choice let Microsoft start in > 1975 and Linux in 1991?
What kind of choice let UNIX come out in the 1960s and Windows come out in 1987?
I mean, as long as we're going to make retarded comparisons.
> The GUI is part of the system.
Fallacy of equivocation. There is a system-level architecture of the operating system, and there is a user-facing architecture. The GUI is not responsible for stability or speed, and there is no element of the operating system which is directly responsible for the price. The three factors you want in a GUI do not belong to the GUI.
> My opinion? No, it can't.
Empirical fact? Yes, it can.
> I wouldn't be so sure whether that > middle is undistributed.
I would. You've claimed that in the theoretical case I proposed, the latter program does not come "from" the former, it is simply "like" the former. This implies that a program may be "like" another or "from" another, but not both - which is not true. You have failed to account for - or "distribute" - the class of programs which are "like" the programs they are "from". Hence, it is undistributed.
> Why don't you check a changelog?
If I have to look at the changelog to know what changed, it's a subtlety.
> Yes, XGL.
WTF? What kind of loser gets excited about XGL? "Wow! My desktop is as pretty as Vista or a Mac!" Where do you demo this, mental hospitals?
> Also, no crashes.
That's not exactly true - you've just redefined "crash" so it doesn't include what Linux systems do. This might be good marketing, but it's still just a lie.
> Vista adds _extra_ DRM crap that normal HD-DVD > players don't have
Vista is not just a normal HD-DVD player.
> Yah, by avoiding Vista, HD-DVD etc where possible
Avoiding Vista is ambiguous. It doesn't make any more statement about DRM than it does about all the other technologies in Windows. Fundamentally, "don't buy Vista" always looks like "don't pay for software" these days, which is only incidentally about DRM.
If you want to make a statement about DRM, you have to avoid something that is ONLY about DRM, like DRM-enabled media and hardware. Don't buy an HD-DVD drive. Don't buy an HD-DVD disc. That makes the statement you want. But not buying Vista because of DRM is like not buying a car because you don't like the aftermarket accessories.
> But all other things aren't equal.
That's true. There are thousands of OTHER ways Vista is better than the alternatives. But let's pretend DRM really is the only difference, because otherwise you pretty much have to be retarded to use Windows and not want Vista. After all, if you're anti-Windows, the Vista upgrade question isn't even really a question.
> In fact it may be my responsibility to do > so given I think it's not in their long > term interests to do so.
Just like it's my responsibility to explain to those same people that you are very, very wrong.
In the end, they'll make their own decisions. That's called free-as-in-speech, and I like it very much. You should, too.
No it isn't. It's about choices. The only people who whine about luck are people who make bad choices.
> stability, speed, price.
Those aren't graphical. How strange that what you call the important parts of the GUI, as opposed to the system, are actually parts of the system. Could it be that the Linux GUI has no redeeming value whatsoever, being nothing more than a half-assed copy of Mac and Windows concepts?
> If it's closed source, I could only take it's functionality.
Straw man. We're talking about whether one program can come from another even if it doesn't use any of the same source. Whether it's open source is irrelevant, because the question demands that you don't use any of the same source.
> That is "like", not "from".
Fallacy of the undistributed middle: the concepts are not mutually exclusive.
> Linux now does run on old hardware while > Microsoft's OS doesn't.
Well, yeah, it does. Because it doesn't do anything new. Everything it does today is pretty much the same stuff it was doing in 1994. There are subtleties and new applications, but fundamentally, it's pretty much the same O/S.
> Linux is getting better, Microsoft OS is > getting worse.
I think volume shadow copy rocks. Every time I show it to someone, they get excited about it. They're like kids. They say "Oh my GOD, that is SO COOL! Hey, Bob, come see this!" and Bob comes over and says "Holy shit, I wish I had that last month! Sharon, come see this!" and before you know it there are a dozen people crowded around the machine who are all but dancing in the aisles over this fantastic new feature.
> If the "average person" doesn't want to learn > something better,
What they want isn't the issue. Most people don't have TIME to learn new things. They work eight hours of the day, commute for two, and spend about an hour each morning and night getting ready for work or bed respectively. Add in an hour for sitting down to dinner with their family, and they have three waking hours to spend on learning anything their job doesn't cover. Unfortunately, it's the SAME three waking hours they have for everything else. If they choose to learn Debian, that's time they don't get to spend on something else, like - in my case - working out and playing with my kids. Do you honestly consider Debian more important than my health and my children? Fuck you too.
Of course, many of us here on Slashdot have all the time in the world to spend on computing stuff, because it's often our job. If I go to my manager and say "hey, it would be really useful to me if I could get a solid understanding of the Debian Linux distribution", he'll ask why, and I'll make my case, and if it's a *good* case he'll green-light it and I'll actually get paid to do it. So if I wanted to go learn Debian, I could do that.
But my garbageman can't. My mechanic can't. The cashiers at my local supermarket can't. They have better things to do with their lives.
> they only have themselves to blame.
I love this attitude. Every time I see it, there may as well be a big Windows flag flying over it. Say what you want about our products, nobody at Microsoft tech support will EVER call you stupid.
Nobody prevented you from starting. You chose to sit on the sidelines giggling and snorting at the stupid people using what amounted to CP/M with a crap imitation of UNIX directory structures.
> Ahh, you want to discuss only about asthetics.
No, I'm simply incapable of determining what differences matter to YOU. Go look at it. You'll look at the things you think are important, and you'll see they're different. You may not like them, but you can't say they're the same thing.
> "From" is a really, really simple word.
If you write a utility that does the exact same thing as mine, and I know for a fact you have seen and used mine, did yours come from mine? You may not have used my code, but you used all my specifications - input, processing, output, indistinguishable. My utility was certainly your "origin, starting point, or initial reference". How is that not "from"?
GNU comes from UNIX because its origin is as a replacement for UNIX. No UNIX, no GNU. Direct dependency.
> Have you tried run Vista on a 6-year-old PC?
You are missing the point. UNIX never ran on 16-bit CPUs, even when they were new. Claiming Linux didn't run on them because they were old is just a straw man. The community ignored and insulted the 16-bit processor, and Microsoft ate them alive in that market. "Fine," they laughed, "we don't want it anyway."
Well, you do now. But you don't get it. You lacked the vision. We didn't. Whine all you want, but you lost because you thought we were losers. Yet in the end, truth will out.
> Not the monoliths of yesteryear, but the flexibility > to provide familiar functionality where you need it > and when you need it.
My perspective: replace the word "need" with the word "want".
The average person wants to open a box and pull out a disc that he shoves in his PC and it just fixes everything. He goes to watch a movie, and it works. He goes to listen to some music, and it works. He plugs in his digital media player, and it works. He opens a web site, and it works.
Eventually, he says "hey, I want to do this-and-that" and expects that whatever he needs to do this-and-that is either already on his PC, or someplace where he can click a button and put it on his PC.
No, we're not there yet. But I know what I think is closer.
This functionality is largely made possible by the web - "I want to make a ZIP file, that means I need WinZip", www.winzip.com, click-click-click. Where the web fails is in its general inability to "push" associations to the user without abusing the privilege. WinZip managed to dethrone PKZip, but that's a rare feat, and it tends to happen with platform changes. With the increasing ZIP support built into Windows, it's also likely that WinZip's market is slowly shrinking.
Where the tightrope pops into play is when you want to say "use this", which is essentially what you have to do. The alternative is to say "I want to work with this-and-that" and get a big menu full of choices. WTF? I didn't say "I want to evaluate tools that I might want to use to work with this-and-that". So when the user says "give me something that does this", we have to pick one. If we don't pick the same thing you would have picked, we get accused of having an agenda. Hell, we get accused of having an agenda just because we picked something at all - not that we'd get any credit if we offered a choice.
A large part of who dominates the desktop is going to be decided based on what those choices are, and on how many things are being left out in the initial install. It's like having a Lego monolith; you decide which pieces stay on and which pieces come off and which pieces you want to add, but in the beginning you get something that "just works".
This is a hard question. There are lots of answers. Several of them are right. A few orders of magnitude more are wrong. Anyone who wants to be playing the O/S game over the next few years has a hard job ahead... but the hardest jobs are also the most fun.
True dat. Realistically, I couldn't have a muscle car; I get too damn many speeding tickets in my big-ass boat of an Oldsmobile. If I had something with any real power, those tickets would just start being for THREE digit speeds, and I can't afford that.
Besides, I like Oldsmobiles; they're nice and comfortable, and when's the last time you heard of ANYONE, ANYWHERE stealing an Oldsmobile?
> There is someone else who is more reliable, and > faster. You are out. Better luck next time.
Your choice. Trouble is, that "someone else" is not doing the same thing we're doing. Most people aren't satisfied with the "more reliable, and faster" competition, because it doesn't do what they want or need.
> How is Vista GUI different than OSX, XGL, and > Looking Glass?
Um... look at it. It's not like we're discussing deep system internals here, it's a GUI.
> Yes, on Unix, not from Unix.
That depends on how you define "from". All of the GNU utilities are 100% compatible drop-in replacements for UNIX utilities. They may not be the same code. They may not have used any of that code. But for all intents and purposes, they are identical to the UNIX utilities. The average user can't tell the difference. Did they build from the code? No. They built from the specification. But in the end, what exactly is the difference?
> Linux came after GNU.
Yes, which is why GNU was certainly not written for Linux. It was written for UNIX.
> The GNU project has as a goal to create a Unix clone without > using any Unix code. So any GNU code was not writen for Unix.
You're dancing around the issue here. The GNU code was written:
- By UNIX programmers - On UNIX machines - To UNIX specifications - For a UNIX environment
And since the HURD was a piece of unmitigated shit that didn't work on most machines for most of its history, the vast majority of GNU utility usage was by UNIX users on UNIX machines.
Of course, it wasn't being written for UNIX. It was being written for a UNIX clone that was not UNIX. GNU's Not UNIX, remember? But the functional difference is nil.
> there wasn't any 16-bit code inherited from Unix to Linux
There wasn't any 16-bit code *in* UNIX. When everybody had a 16-bit processor, the UNIX world did not care, and actually insulted anyone who would settle for a 16-bit processor. Why, they should go back to college, and hang around in the computer lab at all hours to get real computer time on a real computer.
That attitude is why the UNIX world isn't so popular - because you've never gotten past it. You still think anyone who uses Windows is somehow defective or ignorant. And no matter how much you try to rationally explain how superior you think Linux and its ilk are, you never quite get beyond the idea that we're defective or ignorant, and we can tell. It's not a very good PR tactic.
I am of the opinion that "modern C++" is a non sequitur. You should write C++ for one of two reasons.
1. You have a massive C++ codebase that you are maintaining 2. C++ is the best language to do what you are doing
If you are in situation 1, you should not expect a modern compiler to work with your application. I have worked on projects within the past five years that needed to be compiled with MSC7, because a large codebase existed which wouldn't compile on newer compilers. The code could, however, be compiled as a library - and was then happily loaded and used by a.NET assembly. If today's compiler doesn't work on your old codebase, throw it out and use one that does.
If you think you are in situation 2, you are almost certainly wrong. Complex template metaprogramming is probably not what your application does. It is most likely a solution to a problem your application has. If your application has a problem that can only be solved in C++ by complex template metaprogramming, you are using the wrong language.
This is, of course, a religious issue. Many people would rather write everything in C++, because no matter what your application might be, you KNOW you can do it acceptably in C++. I tend to think that you should instead learn several languages, so you can do it better and faster by picking the language best suited to the task.
There are a lot of web projects I could write in a week using C++, or in a day using ASP, or in an hour using Ruby. And of course, if I get paid by the hour, my choice is very different than if I get paid by the job - but since I work at Microsoft, anything I do at the office tends to end up using ASP. What I do on my own time is a different story, because I like learning and using lots of languages.
Would you prefer I do nothing, or something? Something is slower. I can do nothing really fast. Look, I'm done already.
> if everybody is just working on the same > ideas, then Microsoft didn't actually innovate?
Innovation isn't just about what you do, it's about how you do it.
> Linux doesn't contain any code from Unix, > it had to start from point zero.
That's a technicality. The Linux kernel started from point zero, but it relied on the GNU project to provide working utilities. They started from point zero, too, but on UNIX. Is the GNU project UNIX code? Technically, no; it's not code that was part of any UNIX vendor's offerings. But it certainly wasn't written for Linux - it was written for UNIX, which might conceivably be said to make it UNIX code.
And since it's rather subjective which point you make with it, most people make whichever point suits their purposes at the time, then switch to the other point whenever it seems to be advantageous.
> it IS my right that IF I buy an HD disc, that I be > able to watch it on whatever media I choose
The media companies don't agree. The law doesn't require them to agree, but it does permit them to disagree and to enforce that disagreement.
This is not smart, but we can't make the media companies do smart things. We have to let them do what they do.
> I thought you said it's not my right to watch HD > content.
It is AFTER you purchase a license, PROVIDED you abide by the terms of that license.
> I agree that the law prevents you from doing > anything else - that is why it is broken.
But it's not Vista that is broken. It is the law, and the misuses to which the media companies are turning that law.
> My natural response is to not use Vista. > That DOES accomplish something - it protects > my rights! How can you be missing that point?
Vista isn't what restricts your rights. The media companies restrict your rights. They do it because the printing-press era IP law we refusing to fix lets them do it. We don't have a choice. You don't have a choice. Your rights are not protected if you don't use Vista; you still don't have them. The law says the media companies don't have to give you those rights, and the media companies don't give you anything they don't have to give you. You gain nothing.
> You apparently have some misplaced sense of > loyalty to Vista and/or Microsoft which I > simply do not comprehend.
I'm a contractor at Microsoft working on Vista. We're doing a lot of great work over here. I think it really sucks when people like me and the rest of my team bust our ass twelve hours or more every day trying to make Vista the best product we can, and people peg on some minor feature we honestly can't control and complain that the whole product sucks.
> Or are you claiming MS is adding hidden features > to its OS to make Office 2007 better?
No, we're adding public features to the O/S to make everything better. Provided, of course, developers read the documentation and implement the new functionality these features enable.
> But which law says you need to put "tilt bits" > and all the other DRM stuff into Vista
The law that if Joe User buys an HD-DVD at Wal-Mart and sticks it into his HD-DVD drive on his brand new computer running Vista, it had better work.
DRM is there because people want it. They might not know they want it, but that's not our problem. And if you really don't want it, guess what? Don't use the HD media that need it, and you'll never see it.
> All that looks like increased value to you?
Choice 1: An operating system that plays media format X. Choice 2: An operating system that does not play media format X.
All other things being equal, which is more valuable? Economically, it doesn't matter whether you ever try to play media format X - the ability in and of itself has value.
Compare second amendment rights. I do not own, do not want to own, and never intend to own a personal firearm. However, I recognise the value of my right to do so, and oppose efforts to remove or curtail that right.
The argument that we are taking away your right to do whatever you want with your HD media content is fallacious. You do not have any right to do anything with HD media content except where it is granted by a license. Licensing for HD media is currently contingent on DRM; if you do not have proper DRM, you do not get a license. This is STUPID, but we are not in charge of it. The owners of the rights are in charge of it. No matter how stupid their licensing terms are, we have to support those terms, or you get no rights.
So the choice isn't "all rights" or "DRM rights". It's "DRM rights" or "no rights at all". Eventually, the idea of DRM rights will prove to be stupid in the marketplace, and they will gradually disappear. But we can't get that to happen any other way than waiting until it shows itself to be the massive failure it ultimately is.
Disclosure: I'm a contractor at Microsoft working on Vista.
Please don't use this! It's a conspiracy to make you sign onto the DRM bandwagon. Sure, first it's just a few little things, maybe a driver or two... but then suddenly you can't watch your DVDs! Or rip MP3s off your CDs! Oh noes! THEY ARE WILL TAKES YOUR MONEYS!
Remember: just say no to Linux with proprietary slimeware in it. Demand that Linux consist exclusively of homegrown products, written by unqualified and untrained volunteers in their mom's basement! It's the future, stupid! We don't need no steenking media support! Go take that business stuff to Canada or something. America is about freedom! Free-as-in-beerdom! We don't need to pay for no nothing no way!
I should probably wave a big "SARCASM" flag here.
Competition is good. This is competition. We like competition. It inspires us. It galvanises us. It makes our products better. It will make your products better, too. And better products on *both* sides of the fence make things better for everyone.
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I have my digital cable loaded for bear with every premium channel, three dual-tuner DVRs, two bare receivers, an average of two PPV movies a week at $4 a pop, and thirty hours a week of recorded programs for time-shifting. That costs me roughly $200 a month. What would it cost with AppleTV?
The offerings just coming on the market are targeted at "average" usage, but the drivers of this technology are not average. I have hundreds of videotapes and thousands of CDs. If you try to restrict me to "average" habits and charge me $400 to do what I'm already doing, I won't switch - and if I don't switch, nobody I know switches, because they look to me for guidance. If I say AppleTV sucks, they don't even evaluate it.
I passed them, I just lost interest. The one where you have to lay the bridges and move the explosive barrels was probably the most fun I've ever had in a GTA mission.
And I miss my hydraulic jumpy cabs, dammit! I want hydraulic jumpy cabs! GTA4 better have them!
I like to have a game I can play IN ten hours, but FOR hundreds.
I'm back playing GTA: Vice City at the moment, because it was fun. It takes approximately FOUR HOURS to go from start to fully unlocked. Then I can spend days, weeks, months playing my own little games. Sure, I could be done in another few hours by doing the missions - but there are hidden packages, rampages, stunt jumps, taxi driver, vigilante, paramedic, not to mention using the road outside Leaf Links as a half-pipe with a PCJ-600. Once my taxicabs get hydraulics, that particular brand of fun literally occupies me for days.
GTA: San Andreas, I've actually never completed. I got sidetracked riding bikes around Mount Chilead, and I've sort of lost interest in the storyline. I keep starting it over, and I get to the part with the remote control planes and crap, and right around there I end up just riding bikes around the countryside again.
Oblivion? I've logged about three hundred hours in it since starting my last run, and I've yet to do any of the main quest. It amused me to be nearly a year of game time into it, and wander back into the Imperial prison to find Baurus still standing over the Emperor's corpse. (Then I did the Dark Brotherhood quests, which changed this. Pout.)
I like having the choice. Do I want to hammer through it in two or three days, or do I want to geek out on it for a year and a half? If I only get one of those choices, the game sucks.
> Microsoft wasn't competing with Unix.
> Microsoft's market was the PC.
If we weren't competing, how did you lose?
> The link that you give points to the
> economic advantages of using open-source.
The link that I give is current. The link that you give is eight years old. I tend to think telling lies NOW is more important than anything a business did eight years ago.
> It crashes, you made it, your fault.
Usually, we DIDN'T make what crashed. The user just doesn't know the difference between the Windows operating system and an application window.
> Not in the form that it has today
That's called "progress". It's good. You should try it sometime.
> It's more stable, faster, more reliable, and cheaper.
Only in the most shortsighted and limited ways. There are hidden costs with every flavor of UNIX.
> She can get a PC with Suse, Ubuntu, or Debian pre-installed.
That doesn't teach her how to use it.
> Every average Joe I know has a geek on the background
> configuring and fixing things on Windows.
And not one single average Joe of your acquaintance runs Linux? Why doesn't that geek just set them up with Suse or Ubuntu or Debian? Is it possible this geek realises it would be a Bad Idea?
> I think that Linux will eventually win, because
> it's more productive for corporations.
Ever run one?
Never mind, I already know the answer. If you had, you'd know just how wrong that statement is.
> Microsoft didn't compete with Unix back in 1985 (and not 1987)
... is limited". There are plenty of developers when you need them, but not enough when your competitors follow you into the open source world. And absolutely nowhere is it made clear to the potential open source business that you need to cover the entire support chain, because developers are paid out of the fees charged for other services.
Actually, we did.
> You are talking about the artwork.
No, I am talking about the interface. It amuses me that you don't understand this, so I'm not inclined to assist you.
> Well, dodging no more: what hardware you need.
Again, not the interface.
> And Microsoft does business in a shadowy way,
> if you know what I mean.
All business is shadowy.
Notice that an open source effort "can muster more brains", but "the pool of talent
So get off the high horse.
> Joe User just sees adware/viruses/trojans,
> lots of crashes, and the price of Vista.
That's not really true. Most malware and crash reports are wrong; the user simply doesn't know the right word for what happened.
Which is another excellent example of the shadowy business practices coming from YOUR side of the fence.
> Vista was released November 2006.
The Vista interface was first shown publicly in 2003, long before XGL ever showed up, and far too soon after OSX 10.2 (in 2002) to have copied it.
> Are you trying to say to me that Windows does
> things that Linux cannot?
Not exactly. I'm trying to say Linux doesn't do things that make real people's lives and jobs easier. Linux is instead largely consumed by a desire to run on older hardware and use fewer resources, because the people working on it are going "how about we use this old 486 SX/25?!" and then running `top` to see what the system load is. That's one thing when you're all drinking Red Bull and tequila, so you can high five each other and say "that's even better than your DX/33!" and quote Monty Python all night. That's a fun party game that you can play with your geek friends. I'd be happy to join you next time you guys are doing that, although I'm certain Microsoft contractors aren't invited.
But there is something very very wrong about suggesting that Shirley the housewife should be using it to do the tournament schedule for her bowling league because it runs on old hardware she has never seen (let alone owned) and has a really low number over HERE on this incomprehensible screen full of unfamiliar words.
> it's the overall experience that matters.
Actually, it's not. It's the experience in a very few key situations that matters. Most of the time, it doesn't really matter whether you're running Windows or Linux. But that last bit of the time is a big geekapalooza on Linux, where you have to race around asking dozens of mailing lists how to solve your problem, and then you come out the other end a conquering hero. On Windows, that last bit tends to be a few rapid searches leading to a KB article, and most of your co-workers don't even know what happened.
Which is the real key situation. The Linux jockey, someone like you or me, wants to be the conquering hero. We want to forge the path and pull out the weird esoteric knowledge that demonstrates our inherent superiority.
But Joe User is not inherently superior, and he knows it. He is just a regular guy. Joe User has one overriding goal every single day, and that goal is not to do anything TOO stupid where anyone else can see it. So Joe User really, honestly, PREFERS to have his situation end up with a search for a KB article that nobody ever sees him make.
I don't think the Linux community understands Joe User. I think they look at him and go "What? No, dude, seriously, it's not hard! See,
I generally advise people to give Vista a week before they start worrying about how many security dialogs they see. That first week is not normal usage, and you do a lot of administrative work on the system. Wait until you get the bulk of the configuration done, and then see how much security is nagging you.
;)
In my experience, you spend three or four days getting nagged to death, and then all the bothersome dialogs just go away. But I'm biased.
> Wow, you conveniently snipped out my entire question
> and selectively quoted me to sound like a moron.
Your question made you sound like a moron. I was trying to protect you from the inevitable embarrassment you would suffer once you realised how stupid the question was.
I'll give you a second chance to figure it out yourself. Of course, you can still demand that I lay the smackdown on you, but that's up to you.
> Microsoft manufactured OSes for PCs, not mainframes
Oh, so we chose the wrong market, is that it? It's interesting how Microsoft's disadvantages were by choice, but Linux's were just luck.
> If, the part that renders the GUI is not well writen,
> it will cause crashes.
But regardless of how well it is written, the part that renders the GUI is not the GUI.
> But if I want the Vista GUI, I will have to buy Vista,
> so there is a price.
It's still not part of the GUI. I keep asking you what's important in a GUI, and you keep dodging the question.
> An empirical fact from a Microsoft employee.
A fact is a fact. It doesn't matter where you get it, it's still a fact.
> Why it cannot be both?
I didn't say that. You said that. You said it was "like, not from". In actuality, it's both, but that sort of means you're wrong.
> Why? Don't you want to know?
It's not that I don't want to know. It's that the subtleties don't matter. Joe User doesn't give a tin shit in a wicker basket whether the thread scheduler uses a more efficient context switching algorithm. Sure, that's nice, and I'd love to see the performance difference - but I'm not going to do it with normal use. I'm going to do it with a throwaway driver that spawns hundreds of thousands of threads and monitors system load. But that's because I'm a GEEK, and I think this stuff is FUN. I am not and will never pretend to be a normal user.
> First, I remind you that OSX and XGL preceded
> Vista.
Not really. Microsoft blathers endlessly about what we're doing. We understand that if you try to build it yourself and shove it on the market first, it will suck anyway, because you weren't smart enough to think of it yourself - so you're not going to be smart enough to build it yourself, either. We learned this from the open source community.
What about you guys? Learning anything from us? Oh... never mind. You're still doing the same things in the same ways and getting the same results. That's why I need to read the changelog to see what you did over the last two years.
> Second, XGL uses system resources way more efficiently.
Volume shadow copy lets you recover previous versions of documents you've changed.
So when your boss says "rewrite this whole presentation" and then comes back just after you save it and says "hey, get me the old presentation", you right-click and select "Restore Previous Versions", then pick the one you want.
That saves your ass way more efficiently.
Oh, but system resources are important, too. Just not to the boss.
> What kind of choice let Microsoft start in
> 1975 and Linux in 1991?
What kind of choice let UNIX come out in the 1960s and Windows come out in 1987?
I mean, as long as we're going to make retarded comparisons.
> The GUI is part of the system.
Fallacy of equivocation. There is a system-level architecture of the operating system, and there is a user-facing architecture. The GUI is not responsible for stability or speed, and there is no element of the operating system which is directly responsible for the price. The three factors you want in a GUI do not belong to the GUI.
> My opinion? No, it can't.
Empirical fact? Yes, it can.
> I wouldn't be so sure whether that
> middle is undistributed.
I would. You've claimed that in the theoretical case I proposed, the latter program does not come "from" the former, it is simply "like" the former. This implies that a program may be "like" another or "from" another, but not both - which is not true. You have failed to account for - or "distribute" - the class of programs which are "like" the programs they are "from". Hence, it is undistributed.
> Why don't you check a changelog?
If I have to look at the changelog to know what changed, it's a subtlety.
> Yes, XGL.
WTF? What kind of loser gets excited about XGL? "Wow! My desktop is as pretty as Vista or a Mac!" Where do you demo this, mental hospitals?
> Also, no crashes.
That's not exactly true - you've just redefined "crash" so it doesn't include what Linux systems do. This might be good marketing, but it's still just a lie.
> I'm confused.
I can tell.
> Most people who call MS tech support
> already know they're stupid
Hm. I see. So when a user needs tech support, it's not because he's doing something unfamiliar - it's because he's stupid. What a fantastic attitude.
> ease of use and convenience are
> available for those who are smart
> enough
Do you honestly not see the problem with that statement?
> Vista adds _extra_ DRM crap that normal HD-DVD
> players don't have
Vista is not just a normal HD-DVD player.
> Yah, by avoiding Vista, HD-DVD etc where possible
Avoiding Vista is ambiguous. It doesn't make any more statement about DRM than it does about all the other technologies in Windows. Fundamentally, "don't buy Vista" always looks like "don't pay for software" these days, which is only incidentally about DRM.
If you want to make a statement about DRM, you have to avoid something that is ONLY about DRM, like DRM-enabled media and hardware. Don't buy an HD-DVD drive. Don't buy an HD-DVD disc. That makes the statement you want. But not buying Vista because of DRM is like not buying a car because you don't like the aftermarket accessories.
> But all other things aren't equal.
That's true. There are thousands of OTHER ways Vista is better than the alternatives. But let's pretend DRM really is the only difference, because otherwise you pretty much have to be retarded to use Windows and not want Vista. After all, if you're anti-Windows, the Vista upgrade question isn't even really a question.
> In fact it may be my responsibility to do
> so given I think it's not in their long
> term interests to do so.
Just like it's my responsibility to explain to those same people that you are very, very wrong.
In the end, they'll make their own decisions. That's called free-as-in-speech, and I like it very much. You should, too.
> Luck did. It's all about luck.
No it isn't. It's about choices. The only people who whine about luck are people who make bad choices.
> stability, speed, price.
Those aren't graphical. How strange that what you call the important parts of the GUI, as opposed to the system, are actually parts of the system. Could it be that the Linux GUI has no redeeming value whatsoever, being nothing more than a half-assed copy of Mac and Windows concepts?
> If it's closed source, I could only take it's functionality.
Straw man. We're talking about whether one program can come from another even if it doesn't use any of the same source. Whether it's open source is irrelevant, because the question demands that you don't use any of the same source.
> That is "like", not "from".
Fallacy of the undistributed middle: the concepts are not mutually exclusive.
> Linux now does run on old hardware while
> Microsoft's OS doesn't.
Well, yeah, it does. Because it doesn't do anything new. Everything it does today is pretty much the same stuff it was doing in 1994. There are subtleties and new applications, but fundamentally, it's pretty much the same O/S.
> Linux is getting better, Microsoft OS is
> getting worse.
I think volume shadow copy rocks. Every time I show it to someone, they get excited about it. They're like kids. They say "Oh my GOD, that is SO COOL! Hey, Bob, come see this!" and Bob comes over and says "Holy shit, I wish I had that last month! Sharon, come see this!" and before you know it there are a dozen people crowded around the machine who are all but dancing in the aisles over this fantastic new feature.
I've never seen that with Linux. Have you?
> If the "average person" doesn't want to learn
> something better,
What they want isn't the issue. Most people don't have TIME to learn new things. They work eight hours of the day, commute for two, and spend about an hour each morning and night getting ready for work or bed respectively. Add in an hour for sitting down to dinner with their family, and they have three waking hours to spend on learning anything their job doesn't cover. Unfortunately, it's the SAME three waking hours they have for everything else. If they choose to learn Debian, that's time they don't get to spend on something else, like - in my case - working out and playing with my kids. Do you honestly consider Debian more important than my health and my children? Fuck you too.
Of course, many of us here on Slashdot have all the time in the world to spend on computing stuff, because it's often our job. If I go to my manager and say "hey, it would be really useful to me if I could get a solid understanding of the Debian Linux distribution", he'll ask why, and I'll make my case, and if it's a *good* case he'll green-light it and I'll actually get paid to do it. So if I wanted to go learn Debian, I could do that.
But my garbageman can't. My mechanic can't. The cashiers at my local supermarket can't. They have better things to do with their lives.
> they only have themselves to blame.
I love this attitude. Every time I see it, there may as well be a big Windows flag flying over it. Say what you want about our products, nobody at Microsoft tech support will EVER call you stupid.
> The one who starts first gets the advantage.
Nobody prevented you from starting. You chose to sit on the sidelines giggling and snorting at the stupid people using what amounted to CP/M with a crap imitation of UNIX directory structures.
> Ahh, you want to discuss only about asthetics.
No, I'm simply incapable of determining what differences matter to YOU. Go look at it. You'll look at the things you think are important, and you'll see they're different. You may not like them, but you can't say they're the same thing.
> "From" is a really, really simple word.
If you write a utility that does the exact same thing as mine, and I know for a fact you have seen and used mine, did yours come from mine? You may not have used my code, but you used all my specifications - input, processing, output, indistinguishable. My utility was certainly your "origin, starting point, or initial reference". How is that not "from"?
GNU comes from UNIX because its origin is as a replacement for UNIX. No UNIX, no GNU. Direct dependency.
> Have you tried run Vista on a 6-year-old PC?
You are missing the point. UNIX never ran on 16-bit CPUs, even when they were new. Claiming Linux didn't run on them because they were old is just a straw man. The community ignored and insulted the 16-bit processor, and Microsoft ate them alive in that market. "Fine," they laughed, "we don't want it anyway."
Well, you do now. But you don't get it. You lacked the vision. We didn't. Whine all you want, but you lost because you thought we were losers. Yet in the end, truth will out.
> Not the monoliths of yesteryear, but the flexibility
> to provide familiar functionality where you need it
> and when you need it.
My perspective: replace the word "need" with the word "want".
The average person wants to open a box and pull out a disc that he shoves in his PC and it just fixes everything. He goes to watch a movie, and it works. He goes to listen to some music, and it works. He plugs in his digital media player, and it works. He opens a web site, and it works.
Eventually, he says "hey, I want to do this-and-that" and expects that whatever he needs to do this-and-that is either already on his PC, or someplace where he can click a button and put it on his PC.
No, we're not there yet. But I know what I think is closer.
This functionality is largely made possible by the web - "I want to make a ZIP file, that means I need WinZip", www.winzip.com, click-click-click. Where the web fails is in its general inability to "push" associations to the user without abusing the privilege. WinZip managed to dethrone PKZip, but that's a rare feat, and it tends to happen with platform changes. With the increasing ZIP support built into Windows, it's also likely that WinZip's market is slowly shrinking.
Where the tightrope pops into play is when you want to say "use this", which is essentially what you have to do. The alternative is to say "I want to work with this-and-that" and get a big menu full of choices. WTF? I didn't say "I want to evaluate tools that I might want to use to work with this-and-that". So when the user says "give me something that does this", we have to pick one. If we don't pick the same thing you would have picked, we get accused of having an agenda. Hell, we get accused of having an agenda just because we picked something at all - not that we'd get any credit if we offered a choice.
A large part of who dominates the desktop is going to be decided based on what those choices are, and on how many things are being left out in the initial install. It's like having a Lego monolith; you decide which pieces stay on and which pieces come off and which pieces you want to add, but in the beginning you get something that "just works".
This is a hard question. There are lots of answers. Several of them are right. A few orders of magnitude more are wrong. Anyone who wants to be playing the O/S game over the next few years has a hard job ahead... but the hardest jobs are also the most fun.
> Still nice for the daily commute though, lol!
True dat. Realistically, I couldn't have a muscle car; I get too damn many speeding tickets in my big-ass boat of an Oldsmobile. If I had something with any real power, those tickets would just start being for THREE digit speeds, and I can't afford that.
Besides, I like Oldsmobiles; they're nice and comfortable, and when's the last time you heard of ANYONE, ANYWHERE stealing an Oldsmobile?
> There is someone else who is more reliable, and
> faster. You are out. Better luck next time.
Your choice. Trouble is, that "someone else" is not doing the same thing we're doing. Most people aren't satisfied with the "more reliable, and faster" competition, because it doesn't do what they want or need.
> How is Vista GUI different than OSX, XGL, and
> Looking Glass?
Um... look at it. It's not like we're discussing deep system internals here, it's a GUI.
> Yes, on Unix, not from Unix.
That depends on how you define "from". All of the GNU utilities are 100% compatible drop-in replacements for UNIX utilities. They may not be the same code. They may not have used any of that code. But for all intents and purposes, they are identical to the UNIX utilities. The average user can't tell the difference. Did they build from the code? No. They built from the specification. But in the end, what exactly is the difference?
> Linux came after GNU.
Yes, which is why GNU was certainly not written for Linux. It was written for UNIX.
> The GNU project has as a goal to create a Unix clone without
> using any Unix code. So any GNU code was not writen for Unix.
You're dancing around the issue here. The GNU code was written:
- By UNIX programmers
- On UNIX machines
- To UNIX specifications
- For a UNIX environment
And since the HURD was a piece of unmitigated shit that didn't work on most machines for most of its history, the vast majority of GNU utility usage was by UNIX users on UNIX machines.
Of course, it wasn't being written for UNIX. It was being written for a UNIX clone that was not UNIX. GNU's Not UNIX, remember? But the functional difference is nil.
> there wasn't any 16-bit code inherited from Unix to Linux
There wasn't any 16-bit code *in* UNIX. When everybody had a 16-bit processor, the UNIX world did not care, and actually insulted anyone who would settle for a 16-bit processor. Why, they should go back to college, and hang around in the computer lab at all hours to get real computer time on a real computer.
That attitude is why the UNIX world isn't so popular - because you've never gotten past it. You still think anyone who uses Windows is somehow defective or ignorant. And no matter how much you try to rationally explain how superior you think Linux and its ilk are, you never quite get beyond the idea that we're defective or ignorant, and we can tell. It's not a very good PR tactic.
> In modern C++ this means templates.
.NET assembly. If today's compiler doesn't work on your old codebase, throw it out and use one that does.
I am of the opinion that "modern C++" is a non sequitur. You should write C++ for one of two reasons.
1. You have a massive C++ codebase that you are maintaining
2. C++ is the best language to do what you are doing
If you are in situation 1, you should not expect a modern compiler to work with your application. I have worked on projects within the past five years that needed to be compiled with MSC7, because a large codebase existed which wouldn't compile on newer compilers. The code could, however, be compiled as a library - and was then happily loaded and used by a
If you think you are in situation 2, you are almost certainly wrong. Complex template metaprogramming is probably not what your application does. It is most likely a solution to a problem your application has. If your application has a problem that can only be solved in C++ by complex template metaprogramming, you are using the wrong language.
This is, of course, a religious issue. Many people would rather write everything in C++, because no matter what your application might be, you KNOW you can do it acceptably in C++. I tend to think that you should instead learn several languages, so you can do it better and faster by picking the language best suited to the task.
There are a lot of web projects I could write in a week using C++, or in a day using ASP, or in an hour using Ruby. And of course, if I get paid by the hour, my choice is very different than if I get paid by the job - but since I work at Microsoft, anything I do at the office tends to end up using ASP. What I do on my own time is a different story, because I like learning and using lots of languages.
A stock BMW doesn't have a Hemi.
;)
Game over.
> template metaprogramming techniques
You're doing it wrong. Refactor.
> Why would I want slower?
Would you prefer I do nothing, or something? Something is slower. I can do nothing really fast. Look, I'm done already.
> if everybody is just working on the same
> ideas, then Microsoft didn't actually innovate?
Innovation isn't just about what you do, it's about how you do it.
> Linux doesn't contain any code from Unix,
> it had to start from point zero.
That's a technicality. The Linux kernel started from point zero, but it relied on the GNU project to provide working utilities. They started from point zero, too, but on UNIX. Is the GNU project UNIX code? Technically, no; it's not code that was part of any UNIX vendor's offerings. But it certainly wasn't written for Linux - it was written for UNIX, which might conceivably be said to make it UNIX code.
And since it's rather subjective which point you make with it, most people make whichever point suits their purposes at the time, then switch to the other point whenever it seems to be advantageous.
> it IS my right that IF I buy an HD disc, that I be
> able to watch it on whatever media I choose
The media companies don't agree. The law doesn't require them to agree, but it does permit them to disagree and to enforce that disagreement.
This is not smart, but we can't make the media companies do smart things. We have to let them do what they do.
> I thought you said it's not my right to watch HD
> content.
It is AFTER you purchase a license, PROVIDED you abide by the terms of that license.
> I agree that the law prevents you from doing
> anything else - that is why it is broken.
But it's not Vista that is broken. It is the law, and the misuses to which the media companies are turning that law.
> My natural response is to not use Vista.
> That DOES accomplish something - it protects
> my rights! How can you be missing that point?
Vista isn't what restricts your rights. The media companies restrict your rights. They do it because the printing-press era IP law we refusing to fix lets them do it. We don't have a choice. You don't have a choice. Your rights are not protected if you don't use Vista; you still don't have them. The law says the media companies don't have to give you those rights, and the media companies don't give you anything they don't have to give you. You gain nothing.
> You apparently have some misplaced sense of
> loyalty to Vista and/or Microsoft which I
> simply do not comprehend.
I'm a contractor at Microsoft working on Vista. We're doing a lot of great work over here. I think it really sucks when people like me and the rest of my team bust our ass twelve hours or more every day trying to make Vista the best product we can, and people peg on some minor feature we honestly can't control and complain that the whole product sucks.
> Or are you claiming MS is adding hidden features
> to its OS to make Office 2007 better?
No, we're adding public features to the O/S to make everything better. Provided, of course, developers read the documentation and implement the new functionality these features enable.
> But which law says you need to put "tilt bits"
> and all the other DRM stuff into Vista
The law that if Joe User buys an HD-DVD at Wal-Mart and sticks it into his HD-DVD drive on his brand new computer running Vista, it had better work.
DRM is there because people want it. They might not know they want it, but that's not our problem. And if you really don't want it, guess what? Don't use the HD media that need it, and you'll never see it.
> All that looks like increased value to you?
Choice 1: An operating system that plays media format X.
Choice 2: An operating system that does not play media format X.
All other things being equal, which is more valuable? Economically, it doesn't matter whether you ever try to play media format X - the ability in and of itself has value.
Compare second amendment rights. I do not own, do not want to own, and never intend to own a personal firearm. However, I recognise the value of my right to do so, and oppose efforts to remove or curtail that right.
The argument that we are taking away your right to do whatever you want with your HD media content is fallacious. You do not have any right to do anything with HD media content except where it is granted by a license. Licensing for HD media is currently contingent on DRM; if you do not have proper DRM, you do not get a license. This is STUPID, but we are not in charge of it. The owners of the rights are in charge of it. No matter how stupid their licensing terms are, we have to support those terms, or you get no rights.
So the choice isn't "all rights" or "DRM rights". It's "DRM rights" or "no rights at all". Eventually, the idea of DRM rights will prove to be stupid in the marketplace, and they will gradually disappear. But we can't get that to happen any other way than waiting until it shows itself to be the massive failure it ultimately is.
> Microsoft has systematically killed off several major
> products on Mac OS X, even as Mac OS X's marketshare
> increases
And while Apple spends millions of dollars on a multinational ad campaign directly insulting Windows?
How unusual.
Disclosure: I'm a contractor at Microsoft working on Vista.
Please don't use this! It's a conspiracy to make you sign onto the DRM bandwagon. Sure, first it's just a few little things, maybe a driver or two... but then suddenly you can't watch your DVDs! Or rip MP3s off your CDs! Oh noes! THEY ARE WILL TAKES YOUR MONEYS!
Remember: just say no to Linux with proprietary slimeware in it. Demand that Linux consist exclusively of homegrown products, written by unqualified and untrained volunteers in their mom's basement! It's the future, stupid! We don't need no steenking media support! Go take that business stuff to Canada or something. America is about freedom! Free-as-in-beerdom! We don't need to pay for no nothing no way!
I should probably wave a big "SARCASM" flag here.
Competition is good. This is competition. We like competition. It inspires us. It galvanises us. It makes our products better. It will make your products better, too. And better products on *both* sides of the fence make things better for everyone.
Begin the conspiracy theories... now.