I personally find that leaving sugar in the bowl helps me keep off the weight too.

Lots more things take more than 5 years to create.

Without the protection of copyright there would just be more secrets - you can't copy information you don't have.
The protections/limitations (depending upon your point of view) of GPL would disappear too.
Most software development would switch to cloud-based services so that all code stays within the company and no software gets distributed.

Add signed 3rd party software repositories to Windows Update and remove the need for all these programs to add their own, often intrusive update processes.

Don't want java? Fine. Don't install and don't add the repos & key.
Want java? No problem add keys and repo and get it updated in a sane manner not an obtrusive installshield app that always seems to fire up when I;m right in the middle of doing something.

This is an area where pretty much every Linux disro wins.
Failing that, an alternative would be an open-source package manager for windows. Bit of a nightmare to make though - as I assume every windows software developer would want you to run their install executable so they can make you accept EULAs etc.

I've already got an embedded device that vibrates.

Thanks for the link. This particular line seems to me to be relevant:

On 27 January 2012, Justice Edwards stated that since the offence for which the US wanted to extradite was regarded as having been committed in Ireland the Court was prohibited from extraditing Garland. He was therefore obliged to refer the case to the Director of Public Prosecutions who would consider whether there was a case for prosecuting Garland in Ireland.

thanks! I've been programming js snippets here and there since 1999 and even though I've use a decent logging framework everywhere else (log4j, log4net, slf4j commons logging, the log object in ruby/rails) im still in the habit of debugging javascript with window.alert

Brilliant. I'm going to watch all the Microsoft ads on youtube and make sure I click every ad link I can find on the pages.

With you there.
We keep hearing about all this testing going on behind these "design decisions" but I'm starting to wonder to myself, who are these people doing these tests? And what do they test them doing?

No i haven't but will take a look when/if i get time.

Generally, I spend a bit of time playing with desktops when a new linix based project turns up and my current distro is starting to look old. I then spend time installing a new distro but it's not long before system tweaking time starts in eat into what should be productive dev time and my patience starts to tip downhill.

I've never yet seen a Linux system I can just start using straight away - but maybe I'm just too fussy.

This particular rant is about Unity but the concept of "design" decision overriding utlity applies.

I really tried using Unity for a week or so but NEEDED to move the launcher / dock thingy to a different screen edge. (reasons below)
First, I tried the obvious click-dragging move - nothing happened
Ok, I told myself. This is open source software! must be a config file somewhere so I googled. Found a post from Shuttleworth himself saying:

I’m afraid the location of the Unity launcher is fixed by design. We want the launcher always close to the Ubuntu button.

Fixed by design? but I want to move it! I'm running ubuntu inside Virtualbox. I NEED both 'dowze and 'nix and the windows host / linux guest config works best for me. I also give that Linux guest a monitor to itself - on the right. Because it's on the right, the left edge of the linux screen jumps the mouse pointer back to the left screen and into the windows host system. So when trying to use the dock with autohide on (i want to use all of my screen when coding) I'd keep touching the edge of the screen and the dock would disappear.
I've got no problem with these design decisions from valuable end-user testing being used to setup defaults but both Gnome and unity seem hell-bent on FORCING you to use their new design paradigms and guess what? It just doesn't suit all use cases.

This being open source, it didn't take long for a whole bunch of options, wokarounds and custom docks to appear but for fuck's sake stop telling me how to use MY computer.
Am currently reasonably happy with KDE - Don't think I'll be going anywhere near Unity or Gnome for a very long time.