I've double checked the reviews, especially for Quicken. They match what I remember: namely inconsistent compatibility even after performing recommended manual registry entries and cleanup applications that are not part of Wine or Quicken itself. It's listed at https://appdb.winehq.org/objec....

I'm afraid that Wine remains an unusable option in a business, scientific, or personal environment where basic software _must_ work without frequent manual debugging.

Wine itself has consistently failed my reviews, due to complexity and inconsistency of behavior. The last time I took a close look was roughly 3 years ago: it may have improved. But it consistently failed with MS Outlook, VMware clients, and Quicken.

> consider trying Xubuntu or Lubuntu

On which none of the business critical, no longer available or extremely expensive to upgrade applications will run. I do a great deal with Linux, but old fiscal and CAD software is notorious for failing upgrades.

> As an IT guy you need people to trust you, which means you need to be ethical.

You need to _appear_ to be ethical to gain trust of co-workers, and to improve your position. I'm afraid to say that this is orthogonal to doing a good job at IT. It's often much, much easier and safer to appear trustworthy by being clear, honest, and open. It reduces the complexities of maintaining various approaches to various people.

But don't mistake such approaches with technical competence or business success.

I went to their page. Then I tried to actually _use_ the "switch to us and keep your old phone", which they'd advertised extensively, and I ran into a series of forms and options that did not actually allow keeping phones. I will admit that I was looking for a family plan, that made it more intriguing. (I pay for my parents' phone bills, they're retired and it's the least I can do to stay in touch.)

How long ago did you do this? Your experience is completely opposite from mine, less than 3 months ago.

Dealing with the work paperwork is billable time. I use this as leverage to discourage complex, Gant chart based approaches to micromanagement.

T-Mobile has been taking full advantage of the difficulty of jailbreaking. Their monthly rates are attractively low, but they do their absolute best to _insist_ that you buy a new phone from them instead of migrating your old phone, and their sales people do their level best to discount even the _possibility_ of such an option. So they've turned around the old model of "free or cheap phones, the money comes from their monthly bills" and separating the costs. This allows them to advertise as the "cheapest", with the hidden and often hideous cost of a new phone amortized over the first few years of your plan.

The other vendors are also now doing this, as well, in their "we'll lower your monthly fee". The confusing plans and options among all the carriers are textbook cases in "bait and switch".

> They can get simple things done without understanding the whole system. That deliver something that sort of works. This makes them Java developers.

Fixed That for You.

[ Note grammatically correct but confusing capitalization, another of my pet Java peeves. ]

> I like the part where they are magically going to make OCR work

I'm afraid you could have left it right there, with no mention of cell phones or their cameras. OCR, much like speech-to-text software, has plateaued and not noticeably improved in the last 10 years. It's became more available as software has become more powerful. But the underlying technologies have been quite stable. Despite flurries of new patents with every update to such software, the fundamental algorithms remain unchanged and have been stable for roughly 20 years.

> there's never been a more secretive administration in the US.

Oh, my. I don't know if you're young, or if the easy access of the modern Internet has confused you about just how _little_ information was available to the general population about government programs 30 years ago or more. Do, please, look up the history of the Pentagon Papers.

> Can you imagine the uproar if 80% of those killed in Afghanistan by US forces were civilians?

They mostly are civilian casualties. Much of what's happening now in Afghanistan is guerrilla warfare, not military forces.

> This is especially bad if they turn out to be seriously vulnerable to any missile system developed that isn't ruinously expensive per shot or a closely held secret used only by somebody's elite guard

Or if, say, the very large and expensive amount of fuel used b supersonic aircraft can be cut off by the opposing force bombing the oil lines from their own country that we relied on to get cheap fuel. It's a bit of a conundrum when the country you're invading is a major source of your fuel. Or if what you need to "win" the conflict is troops and engineers and nurses on the ground to re-establish water, food, and medical supplies after a decade of civil strife.

$500,000 missiles that can hit another supersonic craft at speed is a complete waste of resources in most modern conflicts. The more sophisticated US craft, and their pilots, very effectively cleared the air and the ground of Iraqi and Afghanistani armor and military vehicles in the last few wars. But I'm afraid the lessons of Vietnam and Korea were ignored. Successful air campaigns lead to wars of occupation, and both countries have _centuries_ of experience of outlasting foreign invaders.

Please, please. Don't compare a restaurant to a plane, or bus, or a public street, or a simply invent legal anaglogies. It gets very confusing very fast.

A plane is not a "public place". People need purchased tickets to board, and that ticket can be _revoked_ by the other party. It may be enormously inconvenient, or expensive, or a contract violation, But that has little if nothing to do with law about "public spaces". It doesn't make this situation reasonable.

> How did you know that others didn't click on it and then not mention it to anyone?

Of course they did. Why would anyone normal report this kind of incident to a security department that is bombarding them with warnings, and will fire you if you can't prove you've read their warnings?