But Win7 is a solid product.

That is kind of the point. People don't want mediocre (i.e. solid product). They have been settling for "good enough" but that doesn't mean it is what people want.

He did list Beast. Right after Mantis and before Moondragon.

Are you syncing to iTunes on Windows? That is the only place I have seen the type of problems you describe with wiping data. My wife was syncing to our Windows XP laptop and had these kinds of issues. Syncing to my Mac has NEVER had a problem with any of that.

hold on, I gotta change lanes, change the song, and answer the call waiting on my cell phone...

FTFY

Both my current employer and my previous employer claim to use the Agile process. What this means to both development teams is that the developers didn't have to document ANYTHING so they could just pump out code. I work in the testing group, so we never had any requirements or other documents describing the functionality that we were supposed to test. At best we got a handful of very basic use cases. Agile is just a word to throw around to mean whatever they want it to mean.

While see your point and tend to agree with it, there is still the problem of the perceived victim abusing the system. Under this broader definition, if I ask a co-worker on a date (even if only once and I let it go) and she is so inclined, she can report me for sexual harassment. As you say, the victim defines the crime and most companies have a no tolerance rule for sexual harassment, so I stand a very good chance of losing my job because of something a "reasonable person" would never consider harassment. I have seen first hand a similar situation where a female co-worker didn't like this one guy and looked for anything to report him. As soon as he had an interaction with her while working as a team on a project, she reported him and got him fired, even though another co-worker witnessed the interaction and said it was not inappropriate. Victim cries wolf and someone is fired.

American used the "mechanical failure" excuse on our vacation flight at the end of June. They cancelled the flight 3 days ahead of time, citing mechanical failure, and bumped us to a flight the next day, costing us (11 total passenger in our group) an entire day of paid vacation time at the resort (roughly $3500). After multiple phone calls, complaints, etc. they refused any sort of reimbursement. So putting "mechanical failure" on an Act of God list or not, it is still an industry excuse not to be liable for messing up your plans.

I absolutely agree with you. Vista always seemed to put responding to my input as a low priority activity; even lower than System Idle Process. I used to work in the telecom industry. The priority of processes in a telephone switch (which is just a dedicated computer) was highest priority goes to Call Processing (actually making call connections which is the primary function of the switch). Next to highest priority is responding to the maintenance interface (the user terminal). If someone is trying to do something at the terminal, they have a reason and need a response now. Why the OS thinks all these background processes need priority over what I (the user) is trying to do right now is beyond me. All the things mentioned by the GP like indexing, RSS monitoring, checking updates, etc. can wait a millisecond for the UI to respond to the user and will probably not be noticed at all, ever, by the user. Vista was the worst I ever saw an OS do at this. And in just about all users minds, if the UI won't respond, the system must be screwed up, and it is, but by design not by some virus.

It depends on where you stand in the scenario.

In this case, for Microsoft, who is not directly affected, it's an issue. For CPAN, it's a problem.

At a recent sports practice, some of the other parents were talking about using their new Mac. They all had previous Windows experience. The comment from one person that had a Mac for the longest is that, when attempting to do something on the Mac, don't over complicate it. Try to think like a 4 year old. For example, if you want to put it somewhere, just drag it.

After all, you don't log into your bank with a pseudonym.

Really?? I certainly do. My bank allows me to set up my login ID as anything I want so it isn't attached to my real name.

When an investor asks what you are doing about people copying your games "there is nothing we can do" is not an answer that will go down well.

That's why they wouldn't say "there is nothing we can do", and instead talk about the negative ROI on the cost associated with DRM in not only the sunk cost for the DRM itself but the increased support costs and any other factors they can throw in. The cost of adding the DRM is a known cost. The cost of "lost sales" are all speculation with reports of varying dollars associated with it; some big, some small, but none verifiable. Increased support costs can be estimated based on past call history if they have that kind of data. The point is, a valid argument can be made to any investor that thinks they know more about the business than the game maker.

What I really don't like about this is that Verison is depending on knowledgeable people like McMurry to save them millions of dollars in support instead of actually providing the tech support that the users are paying for, especially at the kind of rates we pay in the USA for internet access. They don't want to spend money to improve bandwidth or to provide good tech support. The poor, locked-in user (since many areas only have one broadband service provider) is lucky to get the help from knowledgeable people on forums because the (often overseas) tech support script readers and no help at all.

My wife tried one of the spam opt-out links, and not only did she start getting more spam, but they started using her email address as a spoofed "From" address. I have since enlightened her on how to handle spam that gets through the server filter.