I'm not a big Microsoft basher despite being a Linux user, but --

Just because there are alternatives doesn't mean they aren't a monopoly. They still are around 90% of the OS market.

You need Office? OpenOffice is available and quite good.

Yes, but you still have to deal with people who use Microsoft Office -- and they're more than 90% of the market.

IIS? Apache. IE? Firefox.

Yeah, Apache wins. Firefox? That's fine, but again, because of Microsoft's presence, there are sites that require IE.

Zune? iPod.

The Zune came out after the iPod was already a success, and Microsoft couldn't leverage their weight to squash the iPod.

Microsoft has a very large market share because they are arguably good at what they do.

They have a very large market share because of business practices that got them convicted as a monopoly. They didn't get their market share in a clean way.

It's not Microsoft that limits what we do, it's the choice of all of the companies to build the software that doesn't work on anything else which then leaves us with no choice.

I agree with this. Unfortunately, there's not enough of a non-MS market to convince companies to port, and we're stuck because there won't be a market until companies port...

This isn't like your cable company where you don't have a choice.

In a way, it is. Find a way for a non-techie to get a PC that doesn't come with Windows. This eliminates using websites because a lot of non-tech people won't know about sites that sell OS-less PCs (does Dell? I don't think they do), leaving you only with stores. Find a store that sells non-Windows PCs. Go ahead -- I'll wait. I don't know how common Apple stores are, but there's certainly not one near me.

Microsoft is becoming less and less of a monopoly as time passes

I agree with this, too. And their attitude since the Vista era is part of it. Which is why -- hey, let them charge extra for an XP downgrade and foist their shitty OS on people. If one out of a thousand users switch to Linux...

Uh, the point of a netbook is pretty much to read e-mail and surf the web. Which is something Linux does quite well.

I really don't mean to be a troll with this. But I wanted to read RoF in order to see what kind of short stories were being published, and so I subscribed for a year.

Most of the story content during the year I subscribed came across as snooty/snobby artsy fartsy junk fantasy. At least as far as I can recall. I have like, zero standards when it comes to reading science fiction/fantasy so long as I can pronounce the character names without needing a guide, and this stuff turned me off. Seriously, I went through a phase where fantasy stories were like crack, and these guys couldn't publish one story in a year that made me feel like the subscription was worth it.

Maybe some of their problem comes from the fact a bunch of people didn't like the content? Content is everywhere. If you want someone to pay for content, it has to be more entertaining or valuable than they can get for free. I can get snooty art fantasy all I want at deviantart for free.

People who don't like Bush -- ESPECIALLY people who don't like Bush -- should want all record of him preserved.

I prefer just to set a password for root -- that's all you have to do in order to have the normal root user that you can su to. Atomic Penguin suggested it upthread.

I prefer that, because then root has a separate password from any user...

Whodathunkit?

No one capable of subtraction? ;)