For example I have a hobby redoing soundtrack from old games. It amuses me, and others seem to enjoy it.

Your handle sounded familiar so I checked your website and saw that it's you who made all those neat remixed DOOM tracks I downloaded ages ago. Completely off-topic but I just wanted to say thanks and show my appreciation for it.

Oh, and I agree with the rest of your post too.

Clippy IS dead. It's been abandoned in all recent MS products, it's only Slashdot that seems to have trouble understanding this.

What more do you want them to add.

Speed. A slick interface. Etc.

Ah. Now I'm reminded of why I don't have too many geek friends. They're obsessed with their operating systems more than what they can do with them. :)

You'll always have SOMEONE who wants to put down a wad of cash for a gaming PC.

Can you feasibly resell a license/copy of a game purchased on Steam?

Nope. There's no way to detach a game once it's purchased onto a Steam account. The best you can do is try to sell the account and hope that Valve doesn't find out if done on eBay or something similar, since they will do their best to deactivate the account.

Steam really isn't the best option if you like selling your games after a while.

Apart from the obvious issue of crippling second-hand games, replaying games in the future is going to be seriously threatened if online activation/authentication becomes the norm. There's no way companies are going to keep servers running for old titles.

We joke about Microsoft all the time here, but stuff like this shows that Windows is still significant enough to be installed on critical systems instead of some customized Linux distro, which is what WE'D have hoped.

Let's face it, Windows isn't going to die no matter what people say. Linux will have to fight even harder to stay significant, somehow.

Why are Macbooks such a popular option at schools/colleges? I thought Apple still wasn't "mainstream".

spend whatever you're saving on some Tux-savvy teachers.

They don't exist. Not in the necessary numbers.

COBOL.

... but all this talk about cyberwar just makes me think PEW! PEW! PEW! for some reason.

what's the problem?

Let's hope you don't want to resell a game you purchased from Steam.

Let's hope that VAC works perfectly and won't ban you from VAC servers by accident because you were running something perfectly legit which happened to trip its detection mechanism.

Let's hope that when Gabe says Valve will release an unlock tool so you can play your games when/if Valve ever collapses, he actually follows through.

Disclaimer: I've used Steam for years and continue to do so. I think it's great... as long as nothing goes wrong.

Let's face it, if (hypothetically) Silverlight happens to become a common-place tech used on the Internet, then we're better off with an implementation in Linux than without. Even if that means binary-only and proprietary.

It's not ideal sure, but few things are in life. Give people who want functionality the means to do so in their OS of choice. If others wish to stick to their own principles, that's fine. They don't have to install the plugin, and can choose to miss out on the next Olympics stream or ability to use an upcoming HD movie service or whatever. But if people want such features, then cool beans, they've got the choice now.

I don't trust Microsoft either, but I've given up complaining about missing functionality in Linux. I just take whatever I can get, proprietary or not (including Flash and NVIDIA drivers). MHO.

Hell I don't even want 3D desktops and transparent windows - take all the damn effects away, and leave me with the folder metaphor, current UI for editing text and pictures, and a command line.

Keep in mind, you're unusual. You WANT a command line for example. Oh, and when I say unusual I mean when compared to those outside of the Slashdot crowd, so no offense. :)

I would suggest that since humans are a very visual-thinking species, there's still a lot that can be improved in the visiual representation of information and the way in which it can be manipulated. The "minority report" interface might be a little impractical perhaps, but it's just one idea out of a group of other ideas for the future of UI. I don't think we should stagnate by keeping current GUIs because they "just work". If they did, people wouldn't keep clicking OK or Close on error messages while not actually paying attention to them for example.