Yeah, but how hard would it have been to put an option in Office 2007 to go back to the menu bar system, if you wanted to? Why piss off 15% of users if you can make 100% of them happy?

Furthermore, those 15% of users are typically the ones in a position to support the product and make recommendations to the other 85%. Pissing off this subset of people was a terrible idea.

Yes, exactly. We can't compare this to breaking into someone's "home". In the case of Mila Kunis and her cellphone, maybe. But if you're breaking into, say, hotmail servers by guessing a password, that is more apt to trying to pick a lock on a locker in a public place, like a train station. It's still theft, but it sounds much less serious than actually breaking into a residence.

Claiming that a UI element (like the start screen or the ribbon) is a "two hour learning curve" is disingenuous.

Whenever I change my login password, I find myself typing in the old password first, for at least a week or two. Using a UI becomes a habit that the user doesn't have to think about, they just use it. The job of a UI is to not get in the way.

So when you completely change the UI, it takes the typical user much more than "two hours" to get used to doing things differently. It can take weeks, months even, to get used to doing things a different way. While the user is getting used to this different method, they constantly have to think about how to interact with the UI, whereas on the old paradigm it didn't require much in the way of brainpower. It was more to do with muscle memory. That can be a hard habit to break.

This is pretty much how I feel too. I use XFCE + compiz for the perfect blend of speed and desktop customizability. Gotta have a little bling. But the way compiz has been going, it looks like the day might come where it is no longer an option, and I hope that KDE will have their shit together by then. I've checked out KDE several times in the past, but it's just never looked "ready" yet. (to be fair it has been a while)

I completely disagree. It's not the users' concern where Canonical gets their money. If they offer their distro for free, it is their own problem how they get their funding. If users don't like their product, there are many, many other free distros to choose from.

Besides, they were doing just fine on their previous funding models, which is what other companies like Red Hat do, right? Why do they need more money? Is the support license money well running dry these days? And if that is the case, whose fault is that?

I think TFS misses on two big points that are helping to bring gaming to Linux.

One of which is Android. There are some pretty decent FPS games running on the SGS3 in 720p.

The other one is the OUYA project, which is also built on Android. They've already raised over $8.5 million and they havent even shipped a console yet.

Will the big publishers follow suit? Who cares? The point is a new market for gaming is emerging. Competition will allow new big publishers to emerge.

I clicked on your link just in case you attempt to measure /.'s impact on your numbers. Go Firefox!

Undoing my mods in this thread because I have to ask - have you never used the "shutdown" or "restart" options? Do you ever turn off your computer?

While I agree with you completely, I think you're looking at this backwards. Linux people will put Linux on servers no matter what - but if we know that purchasing a ProLiant server is going to come with less or no headaches as compared to some other brand's unknown experience, maybe we'll be more likely to purchase a ProLiant. At least that seems to be HP's angle in this case.

I think where the judge's analogy falls apart is when he assumes your car would still be "fully functioning" if you avoided the amusement park for cars. If I want to buy (insert some new PS3 game here) and play it without ever connecting to the PSN, I'm going to be forced to install a firmware update just to play the new game, aren't I? I don't see how that would constitute my PS3 being "fully functional" anymore. (and I don't see how that could be worked into this car analogy either)

Not that I own a PS3; I don't. But that's how things are done with my Xbox360.

Exactly. Or perhaps a better analogy would be handsfree Bluetooth.

"I bought this car because it has Bluetooth. It's not a feature every owner of this model will use, but it is one of the reasons I chose THIS car over other cars."

And then the manufacturer remotely bricks the Bluetooth because I got my oil changed somewhere other than the dealership.