I'll agree with your first sentence but for completely different reasons. Also, i pretty much disagree with everything else. While Windows 7 is much better than 98 or 2000, I think it's not much better than XP. At work I got a memory upgrade on my Win7 machine from 8GB to 32GB and my quad-core computer slowed down noticably. IT is confused and there's nothing special on that computer. (These are competent guys, not outsourced-help desk folks 8000 miles away who just follow scripts.) My only guess is that Win7 has a memory 'sweet spot' and performance suffers if not in that sweet spot. I've had win7 blue screen twice on me and apps mysteriously hang for a few seconds very regularly. The machine is not heavily loaded and IO isn't excessive. It's extremely annoying. I'm not a fan of Win7 at all. But it's what the corporate IT dictates so I use it. IE has gotten better, but honestly I still prefer firefox as I think it performs better.

Even now, in day to day usage, a Windows box, cannot handle the load that a linux box can. Granted you did say non-technical, but I've seen non-techinical people load a box pretty well, so I don't consider them the same thing.

Linux will never be big on the desktop for entirely different reasons. Vista proved it and Win8 will reinforce that.

Linux devs don't care about the actual desktop. They care about reinventing plumbing...all the damn time. They will spend weeks or months debating and arguing about "python vs perl" rather than "Hmmm, is a button that does X useful?) Actually, the usability people seem to have a disproportionate say in things now. "We have 3 menu items, what functionalty can we deem 'too confusing' and therefore rip out of the app so we don't need a menu.?
I'm hoping this usability is like when fonts first came out in the 90s. People went overboard for about 5 years before sanity returned. I'm wanting to believe that in a couple more years the usability folks will have gotten all this crap out of their system and return from the land of whatthefuckistan.

Printing and CUPS were miles ahead of what Microsoft, or Apple provided, but they sat on their heels and it stagnated. MS and Apple both caught up and passed it. (Apple has done great things with CUPS, but Linux devs and vendors haven't done anything.)

Lennart Poettering is a good example of the normal mentality of Linux devs. They'll work on something they think is cool, then when it starts to get usable, ~70% done, they get bored and move on to something new, leaving it to others to maintain or die on the vine.

Sound is still a joke compared to Apple or MS. Pulseaudio for all it's warts is/was at least something. A common audio. Excellent goal(!!!) and it got some traction. But Lennart got 80% there and decided to go work on something else, it almost immediately stagnated and stalled out. (Yes, I still check the forums periodically. I'm comfortable saying there's not much work on that 20% being done.)

systemd is a pain in the ass compared to the old init scripts. If for no other reason, that it's very different and a lot of distros don't have backward compatibility, IE, simple init scripts that call systemd commands. Then he moved onto that stupid binary logfile crap rather than using the little used and semi-broken functionality in syslog to accomplish the same damn goal. syslogd, syslog-ng, gsyslog (forgot the name of the 3rd syslog variant). all little tweaks trying to accomplish slightly different goals because every g*dd*mn linux dev wants to rewrite a common tool because they know better, or will do it better without certain mistakes.

network-manager (lots of work on wierd edge cases, but little work into normal common things and you have to go through dbus commands to do anything), wicd (because enough people hate network-manager)
gnome-2, gnome-3, unity, mate, for Christ's sake.
printing still sucks butt on KDE. It's still behind where it was on kde3. ;(

But everyone wants to keep rewriting infrastructure and plumbing. Also, touch interfaces! (but that's a seperate topic.)

Linux will never be popular on the desktop because there are so many slightly different, slighly incompatibilities that avg people get sick of it. I've been using linux since ~95 and I'm sick of Linux devs. Maybe I'm just getting old, but I'm to the point where I want stuff to work. I'll take solid and working over shiny 9 days out of 10.

Linux does extremely well on the servers, in huge part I think, because it's not 'sexy' and therefore these plumber-wannabes stay out of that arena. Can you imagine if we had bash, bash-ng, kbash, zsh-ng,zsh-cool, zsh-lite, dzsh, top, top-ng, top-d, ps, ps-ng, ps-d, awk, gawk, ng-awk, gd-awk, glibc, glibc-ng, glibc-gd, etc? linux would have 0.1% server share.

I don't know the breakdown of paid devs vs volunteer contributors. I can't rag on volunteers for just working on cool and shiny things that interest them, but I don't have to say "wow, awesome job reinventing the wheel like the 30 people before you and the 10 others parallel to you"

To anyone reading this and wanting to put words in my mouth, let me stop you in advance.
I'm not saying everythign should be only one way of doing things, but having 6 ways that sorta-work, seems less effective and beneficial than 2 or 3 ways that actually work.

(not directed at you Billy Gates.)
To anyone who considers themselves a linux developer: I'm talking to you. Please think about what I'm trying to say here, and don't be a douchebag and get stuck on grammar mistakes. (If you think grammar or spelling mistakes reflect a point's validity, then you're a pedantic holier-than-thou tool.) I care quite a lot about linux but am growing weary over the years.

You mentioned hip and trendy. I've noticed that Microsoft is still trying to be cool. Watching their commercials and ads and comparing them against Apple, Android and even google's chrome. Microsoft seems to really, desparately want to be 'cool', but their definition of cool is the one that teenagers and early-20 year old men have. Maybe the XBOX division has a lot of influence in the company. Apple and Android commercials, at least the ones I see, are useful things you can do with their devices, and coolness is there but it's well done and comes across and supporting and not the focus, the usage is the focus. Microsoft shoves it in your face that they are cool, and usage is secondary. To me, it comes across as desperate and crying for attention. It's very offputting.

Wow, that site is the granddaddy of buzzword bingo. Created for PHBs by PHBs.

The tea party may have originally been about reducing government size, power and daily involvment of the federal government but I'm not sure that's been the case for a long time. My ex-boss was a tea party guy; hard core. After listening to him many, many times I can very definitively tell you he is more anti-liberal than anti-big government. He worships Glen Beck, thinks Obama is a socialist anti-Christ in cohoots with Soros, out to destroy America, and that all of our problems started when the US took prayer out of school. I was at the airport with him one time and some random guy came up, shook his hand and they started talking. (He was wearing one of those pro-tea party shirts.) They weren't talking about how to solve big government; they were just circle jerking about how liberals are the cause of all of our problems and how we should go back to daily religion (Christian only because "the US is a Christian nation") in every aspect of our lives. He's not an idiot mind you, I like the guy, but guys like Beck and other conservatives have zeroed in on the natural fears that most people have and convinced them to not even talk or listen to any other opinions. It's not about making America great, it's only about beating the liberals no matter the cost.

    I have yet to see anything that actually shows tea party people are about smaller government more than drinking the "liberals are what's wrong with America" cool-aid than anything else.

Check them out. I've heard that they are both looking. One of the devs at RedHat told me they are actively looking, especially on graphics stuff.

Where I live, pretty much if you want an IT job you can have one. Other software fields are the same. Most people I know have very little problem finding a job or getting a different one. Maybe we're in a weird bubble though I'm not convinced of that. I have friends all over the US that say they have little trouble finding software jobs.
    Most of them aren't open source though. However there are some.

Considering someone has patented 'Method of swinging on a swing': patent: 6,368,227), single-click, etc. It's safe to say having a patent no longer means anything regarding your technical skills.

Sorry to nitpick. I agree with your premise that experience counts, I just hate when someone thinks patents actually mean anything. Luckily, one bad example does not negate your point.

Bull. There are no new ideas. The details may change, (language, processor, ...) but the over all concepts don't. I just had this discussion with my wife and friends a couple weeks ago. They're doing pretty much the same thing they did 10 years ago. Half of IT (and software and harware) is ooohhhhh shiny new language. Let's rewrite stuff. Don't kid yourself, there really are very, very few new concepts. Experience matters.

This! 100 times, this!

I lived there for a while, went to Uni there, am married to a Chinese person and have many Chinese friends, both here and in China. I'm very comfortable saying that Chinese people do not innovate very well. In general, creativity and innovation are not traits that are encouraged in Chinese society. The culture encourages conformity and the like. In school, they study very, VERY hard but it's route memorization not creativity. They are much better at copying others' ideas than coming up with their own. That's not US marketing speaking, that's my own observations.

Whereas without regulations, everything is happy-happy koombaya land?

Note: I'm not disagreeing with you, but not having regulations doesn't work either.

If this article has any bearing in reality, then no. The courts will say this infringes advertisers' freedom of speech and will be struck down.

Article summary: Freedom of speech is becoming a large stick with which corporations and let-the-market-decide type folks can beat everyone into submission.

Are you German, do you live in Germany, do you speak/read German and can follow the news? If yes to any of those, I will listen to what you say. If not, then, well, you are welcome to your opinion. While I don't outright dismiss it, austerity is not high on my list of guesses on Germany's economic situation. And let's be honest, we're all guessing.

No, Germany is doing well because of all the exports to China.

Note: I speak and read German. I've had this conversation with German friends of mine who currently live in Germany so I dont' feel I'm completely the economic equivalent of a 72 hour journalist. (A 72 hr journalist is someone who goes somewhere for 3 days and thinks he understands everything about the place. )

I would not put 'austerity' and 'China' in the same sentence. The Chinese government is spending money like a sailor on a 3 day leave at port. The amount of money their spending on infrastructure along is embarrassing. Highways, bridges, dams, ...

Also, China's move to a market economy can be more aptly described as 'Ooooh, capitalism brings in lots of cash. Let's do that but with 'Chinese characteristics' (read: capitalistic but not democratic.)

Also note: I speak and read Chinese as well and lived there. I've also had this conversation with Chinese people in China.

Disgruntled employees of all the other OS airlines decide to start their own airline. They build the planes, ticket counters, and pave the runways themselves. They charge a small fee to cover the cost of printing the ticket, but you can also download and print the ticket yourself. When you board the plane, you are given a seat, four bolts, a wrench and a copy of the seat-HOWTO.html. Once settled, the fully adjustable seat is very comfortable, the plane leaves and arrives on time without a single problem, the in-flight meal is wonderful. You try to tell customers of the other airlines about the great trip, but all they can say is, "You had to do what with the seat?"

However, I believe this more accurately sums up one of the big problems with linux:
Disgruntled employees of all the other OS airlines decide to start their own airline. They build the planes, ticket counters, and pave the runways themselves. They charge a small fee to cover the cost of printing the ticket, but you can also download and print the ticket yourself. When you board the plane, you are given a seat, four bolts, a wrench and a copy of the seat-HOWTO.html. Half of the passengers however decide that they dont like the #10 bolts used to fasten the chair down and that since Linux is all about choice they're going to improve the bolts. So they whip out their tap and die sets and proceed to 'do things their way'. They then proceed to tell everyone around them how good their bolts are. Half of the plane doesn't care because 'it's just a goddamn bolt' and the other half insists on doing it their own way because 'they can'. They then split up into 50 camps each with a slightly different bolt thread or length. The plane can't take off until all the chairs are fastened, so the plane never actually leaves the terminal. All the other airlines' passengers laugh as they take off because LinuxAir travelers insist on debating the same stupid shit over and over and over and over ...