Why? Why is uniformity with every other random application a user might have installed considered the bellweather by which all interfaces should be judged? Is it because that's what they teach in school? Is it because of Apple's arguably outdated and internally inconsistent HIG? Personally I'd rather not have the same exact visual style on the interfaces for my 3d modelling package, video player, and word processor. Claiming they should all be identical is like saying the buttons on my alarm clock should exactly match the buttons (colors, fonts, shapes, materials, etc...) on my blender. Why would I need that? I've never been confused by the fact that my washing machine has a knob control and my diswasher doesn't. In the course of any day I'm using Chrome, 3ds Max, Eclipse, Visual Studio '10, Photoshop, and an internally developed game editor. Some have light color scheme UIs, some dark. Some have ribbons, some don't. None of them would be an app that you could point at and say "That follows Microsoft's look and feel to the letter"....not even Visual Studio 10. I have no problem using all of those apps. My head hasn't exploded. Expecting a bunch of disparate developers to follow the exact same rigid and authoritarian UI guidelines is madness. Make the UI that suits your application.

Don't underestimate the power of Linux users to delude themselves into thinking that "If everyone did..." is the same as "any day now everyone will..." Ask yourself this...what would compel any, let alone every gamer to switch to Linux? It's not the games, as they don't exist. It's not the access to high performance video drivers, as they don't exist. It's not the access to ubiquitous and non-finicky audio systems, as they don't exist. The gamers need something better than what they have if they are going to move away from their current situation and negate their library of games. With regards to Linux that doesn't and probably will never exist. The majority of game companies won't make games on Linux until there is a market, which doesn't exist. Catch-22. For this to ever even have a possibility of happening there needs to be a killer-game-app on Linux and a Linux distribution that is as easy to setup and configure, along with always offering access to current quality video card drivers, as Windows offers. So where is the killer game and perfect gaming Linux distro? Instead of wishing for ponies and utopian group-think you might want to dig in and get to work.

Linux gaming is a niche idea for a niche OS (-Linux on desktops for the masses. I know Linux in the enterprise is big). Microsoft isn't losing any sleep over the idea of Linux gaming going mainstream.

Right, so you can't very well put the cost of making GPL v3 on the shoulders of Tivo as you tried to do with the statement, "Once Tivo Inc. showed GNU just how evil a corporation can be, they had to spend time and money creating GPLv3, time and money that could have been spent actually doing something, instead had to be spent on lawyering." Tivo did what was allowed. The FSF got upset. The FSF then spent money and time drafting a license that covers the problem they didn't foresee. Like the original respondent to your post said, If the FSF wants to limit the way software using their license is used it is their responsibility to review and update their license to disallow the things they want to restrict. "Spirit of the law" is a nice sounding term but it has no bearing on a license. If the license does not stipulate what cannot be done with whatever it covers then it is perfectly legal to do that thing. Tivo had better lawyers than the FSF, end of story.

Your friend was getting AOL tech support and you told her about SMTP? You totally misunderstood your audience.

You totally discount (well, outright ignore) the fact that Bill Gates is the head of the largest foundation on earth that has an aim of vaccinating every child on the planet. He has hundreds, if not thousands, of expert physicians working for him around the globe. When he says something public related to vaccinations he probably knows what he is talking about. Yes, I agree that listening to Jenny McCarthy, et. al about vaccinations was stupid. But that was because they didn't have any knowledge of the problem, just hearsay. But, dismissing Bill Gates for the same reason is exhibiting the same ignorance as the people who listened to the celebrities.

If and when "the best experience of the web" includes needing support for a little known and poorly named video codec than maybe the parent comment would be reasonable. With the small percentage of wanted content on the Web that is encoded with Ogg the post comes off as both trollish and ignorant. Ignorant of the minuscule demand for Ogg Theora and ignorant of the fact that a PR quote can't reasonably be held as factual relative to the opinions of everyone.

That's bad asset creation or bad collision detection code. Again, Bethesda/Obsidian would be to blame.

Gamebryo is the graphics rendering engine. The problems with Fallout:New Vegas are almost entirely AI logic and mission scripting bugs. While the graphics are dull and lackluster the graphics rendering engine is not causing the problems.

Put blame where blame is due. It's the code Bethesda/Obsidian wrote, not the code that they purchased from Emergent.

Where are you located? I've had UVerse for over a year and have a completely different opinion. It can definately pause/rewind live TV. I'm pretty sure it buffers so that recording does not start right at the moment you hit the button, and, above all else, it's contractless. I can kill the service at any time and not have to worry about an ETF. Compared to the other options here, Comcast, DTV, or Dish, UVerse is the best thing going.