The replies I've so far seem pretty hostile to the whole premise of the bash/linux sub-system on windows so I feel some how obliged to mention up front I kind of go both ways. Linux and Windows both seem to have their positives and negatives and I switch between them as needed. You might say I'm "chaotic neutral" on the matter. That's a thing right? Chaotic neutral?

With that out of the way, I would just like to point out you can still use JavaScript for windows scripting. I mean it's technically JScript and grossly out of date but it is there with full access to both Windows Script Host objects and the full WMI suite. There's also VBScript, but who likes that? Except even in "Hyper-V server 2016" (the free-as-in-beer non-GUI server edition) the little choose-an-option menu that comes up is written in VBScript. Why it wasn't powershell I'll never know.

Actually even on Windows 7 or 10 if you search your C: drive for "*.vbs" there are some scripts left over. One of them is actually written a as if it was supposed to be in C but was then converted to VBS. Or C programmer learned VBS in an hour and wrote it in the same format.

Also, people are too hard and CMD batch files. There are a lot of extensions for CMD shell that make it quite powerful. I mean it has so much layered on top of so much else it's really not "elegant" or anything but you can do a lot with it.
For instance, here's a line from a script I wrote a while ago:

if exist "gameinfo\%GAMENAME%_%CONSOLE%.txt" (for /f "usebackq tokens=3 delims= " %%z in (`type gameinfo\%GAMENAME%_%CONSOLE%.txt ^| find /i "current profile"`) do set DISCTYPE=%%z) else (echo could not find text file)

Would anybody assume this could all be done in one line? I mean I find it perfectly readable. It doesn't seem as cool as a bash one-liner but it works. My only point being inefficient though they are there are some solutions on the Windows side, quite capable solutions.

Also feel free to "fork me on github". I would link to it the github project but i have a feeling nobody is going to fork me...

I mean I'm just assuming that's Sony's thought process. I don't actually know. If the my LAN streaming of Steam games is any indicator it won't be quite the Netflix-for-games experience the summary implies. I do have a jumbo wrap-around bluetooth gamepad and a couple different Windows tablets (HP Stream 7, for instance) but I'm just assuming the 802.11g and/or my router wouldn't be able deliver a satisfying experience to it. Again based on LAN Steam streaming experience and nothing else which is presumably completely different technology.

source: https://blogs.windows.com/wind...

I have it turned off as well. So far as I know if nothing else it can be used to transcribe your words in a voice-to-text sort of way. We here on slashdot may be good touch typists, but some people can't and/or won't commit to typing. So being able to talk into the machine is helpful.

And I guess MS's assumption is some contingent of users have been only using iphone for however long that group may be accustomed to only using voice-to-text. If that were the case said people may find trying to use an icky QWERTY keyboard alienating. I imagine if I were say...14 years old and had used very little iOS 99% of time my whole life being forced to switch to typing on a windows computer could be quite alienating. Like something out of era of bell bottoms (thinking like this imaginary 14 year old for a moment, I lack imagination).

Of course, I can think of other reasons. China and india are big markets for instance and most of those populations have only known the phone as their sole computing device. A voice interface of some type might make this transition much easier.

Lets face it: the markets of "the west" are second fiddle now-days. It's more about accommodating the up-and-coming potential markets. If that were the rational I don't fault MS at all for it. I mean 90%+ market share in the western hemisphere there's not much place else to go but China/India that's like 2+ billion people. Choice of who to cater to seems obvious.

Obviously I'm just speculating here. And I hope I had answer to your question somewhere in there....

I very vaguely remembered something about this so I had to look it up. This t-mobile thing could have something to do with the Netflix Open Connect as documented on the Netflix site:

Also I found this old gizmodo article.

It wouldn't surprise me if T-Mobile and netflix simply negotiated a deal to provide one of these appliances. And/or the special t-mobile edition of said appliance uses some kind of proprietary compression algorithm optimized for mobile bandwidth.

Obviously I'm only speculating but it would explain why this can't simply be applied to any/all video sites: the Netflix content is coming directly from a t-mobile data center as opposed to an unknown caching location or across the internet. Not sure why t-mobile can't simply say as much. Maybe they think it would make the net neutrality debate/complaints that much worse or maybe there's some kind of exclusivity deal and they can't discuss it?

I don't think keeping a PC constantly up to date is really necessary to enjoy a majority of games. Sure some people spend hundreds of dollars on multiple video cards, high end processors and fancy monitors from Korea but it's not necessary. Mostly because so many PC games are optimized for console hardware released 10 years ago. If your monitor only goes to 1080p you can usually max out the specs anyway. You can run a 4 year old video card and still enjoy most PC games. Because as I said unless you want some 4k magic, 1080p is pretty easy (haven't tried FO4, probably just as true).

I was kind of excited by the possibility of PS2 backwards compatibility for a second though but now not so much (maybe that will change again in December). I haven't modded with my PS2-with-HDD yet (or my original xbox) but I will eventually. Although at this point extremely small form factor PCs are powerful and cheap enough it may not even be necessary as said PC will emulated all the old consoles anyway. I would probably keep a old wii for wii/gamecube stuff and emulate everything pre-360 on a dedicated PC (or my gaming PC via the steam link).

Oh, and I store my HDDs is piles. Lots and lots of piles. Also, an unnecessary 32 gigs of RAM is really cheap.

You know, some kind of indication that "Science" in this context is some kind of organization or group people versus a "method of study". Too much to ask?

Really, science learned something? Science is an entity now? It goes around learning things?