...but there comes a time when you actually need the best possible tools to accomplish a goal. In my case I like making music. I left the proprietary music making software world full time in 2006 when GNU/Linux had finally caught up to where things were back then. I dumped Cakewalk Pro Audio, Adobe Audition, Cubase VST 24 Studio for Ardour, Rosegarden, Hydrogen, Alsa Modular Synth, LinuxSampler, and QSynth. In general, I was able to do all of the same stuff without much extra effort. In general it's all about templates anyway, so you set up your templates for how you work in these new apps and it really isn't much different. But then I decided late last year to look at what was happening on Mac and Windows and just in the short five/six years I've been away, things have changed drastically. There are much better products and many developers have dropped their prices. It's much easier to get music made with other software and I don't see the Linux apps catching up quite yet. In fact I'm seeing more stagnation thanks to Ubuntu taking over on most development. They are ignoring the applications I used or even dropping them from the repositories.

Yes I can still move to a different distro and build things from source, but that takes away from the time I have to actually make music. So I'm not sure what to do now. The lure of really easy, appealing and efficient tools (that don't all work in WINE and don't play nice with the DSSI plugins like vestige and festige) is pretty strong. And the prices aren't as bad anymore. So as much I as I really want to support freedom, I don't want to have to wait another five to ten years to be able to do what others are doing now on proprietary platforms. Therein lies the rub. Steam releasing on GNU/Linux will provide people with easy access to what they want with no waiting. That's a good thing from the perspective of a PC actually serving a purpose. It's a bad thing in terms of supporting freedom. I don't know where you go with that.

If he wants a locked down platform, he has one available. Just stop developing your stuff for Android and start developing for Apple. You'll get paid like you want, and you won't have to bitch about the platform people like us prefer. It's just like religious people vs. atheists. No one is telling the atheist that he has to be a Christian and believe in god. And no one is telling the Christian that you can't believe in God or go to church on Sundays. Just do what you prefer to do and hang out where you prefer to hang out and ignore those who you disagree with.

This is the most chilling thing I've read in a while: "Three decades ago, the personal computer industry was built on the backs of technology enthusiasts. Every product, every ad was created to please us. No longer. Technology must now work for everyone, not just 'computing enthusiasts'." Why is it chilling? Because I'm seeing it everywhere. Things that I consider to be killer features that MUST exist on a computing device are just disappearing. No OS is immune at this point. As a hardcore Linux fan since the early 90s, even I have to acknowledge that Linux is dying. Ubuntu is killing it. Windows isn't looking to sharp in version 8 either. It sounds like Mac OS X is headed down the same road.

Oh fun. Yet another attempt to justify aggressive driving habits. Fact: If everyone followed the speed limit, obeyed all traffic signs no matter if other cars are around or not, there would be fewer accidents and the accidents that did occur would be less fatal. Full stop. The only "problem" that arises from doing this is the "inconvenience" of taking a little longer to reach a destination. But I'm sure poorly mannered drivers here will correct me. It's happened before and I ignore all of you.

GoogleFS on top of FUSE in Linux has allowed mounting the space that you store Google docs in for quite some time. This whole time I kept wondering, "why isn't anyone writing a GUI for this for Windows and Mac users" so they're not left out in the cold. (Not entirely true with Mac users as FUSE works there too)

...tighten things up a bit more. I found the 11.04 an 11.10 releases to be terribly unstable if you are upgrading in place. Let us hope that any tablet, TV or phone OS release of theirs has a much tighter development model. People who buy TVs, phones and tablets want to have those devices "just work". Computer users are used to having to work around problems. Can you imagine the horror of having to wait for a TV to boot, or to have functionality of the TV change to the point where you have to relearn everything after an upgrade? And I'm an Android user... I love to tweak things which is why little else appeals.

...Apple and Kodak were the first two companies out of the gate with the very first consumer level digital cameras.

...and we've seen both. First is that most developers who write great efficient code usually suck at UI design. They don't know how to make something truly aesthetically pleasing from an artistic perspective. Some can, but it's a rare bird. For the rest, an eBook is just data. If the story is there in monotype font with no antialiasing and no aesthetic flow of the text itself, they've done their job. On the other hand, how many of you remember the "multimedia CDs" of the 90s where a band would release a new album that would typically contain some sort of Shockwave application for Windows or Mac? Some of them were pretty close rivals to the album sleeve art of previous decades. Only they added interactivity beyond just looking at or displaying the thing.

How many of you remember that most of those things were a steaming pile when it came to code? I dissected a few (as well as DVD menus and even DVDs) and found that while the art might look beautiful, there is usually no regard for wasting resources. This is something that coders are driven insane by. You might see the same super large video file duplicated three times in different directories instead of just referencing a single one. The same with graphical content.

eBook designers should strike a balance between providing an aesthetic experience that is at least equivalent to the finest printed books, and as efficient as the most spare Perl script. Good luck finding people who can master both. They are out there, but they're rare.

(This comment is an altered repost of something I accidentally posted anonymously yesterday.)

You know what I mean. Teddy Roosevelt.

But that's where the fun came from. You learned the config file enough to get your system to do things it wasn't intended to do, or do them better than anyone who didn't mess with the config. These days, the only thing that makes one person's device more "fun" than someone else's is largely up to the developers of the web service or app and it's not as easy to get your system to outdo someone else's other than by paying more money for something "better". That's no fun.

Not really. But think of the fun you'll have trying to figure that out! :)

...for me has always been that any OS or device I've used has been riddled with bone headed design decision. Things that break easily with normal use. UI elements that are the wrong size or in the wrong place. Poor choice of fonts. In all honesty, you'd have to be pretty simple minded to love every product that comes out of a single company or every bit of software that comes from the same developer. I mean look at the Ford vs. Chevy guys. That's the ultimate outcome of customer loyalty: a lack of thinking. Given that most of us here are rugged individualists, it's a natural assumption that we're going to want to do things our own way. Sometimes that will be just giving in an saying, "Oh the heck with it, Apple makes a pretty decent device and I don't have the time to fiddle". Other times it will be, "Good lord Microsoft can't code a decent UI to find their way out of a virtual box of nothing. Screw this I'm going back to (insert better OS choice for your needs here)". Show me a person who says, "Everything that (insert company or developer) created has always been perfect and I've had no need to change a thing" and I'll show you a liar. Config files, preferences, options, themes, control panels all exist for a reason: nothing is perfect.

Buy! Never! Something that clunky should be FREE!!! ;P

I remember the early days of Slashdot where this would have everyone talking. It's pretty damn cool. At this point it's prefect for reproducing real old school gaming. DOSBox is great for that too. But look... you're running a real DOS here! No VM needed! Pull out your 486! Get out your 1994 era Pentium 90! Relive the days when computing was actually fun! I installed FreeDOS with GEM (which was the better GUI compared to Windows back in the day until Apple ruined it by suing Digital Research) on a laptop from 1998. That thing is a BEAST now. Seriously, doesn't anyone get excited about this stuff anymore?

Sorry, but you're wrong: http://www.webmd.com/diet/calc-bmi-plus

My BMI hovers between 20 and 21. That is actually incredibly healthy.