We get faxes through a virtual fax number. The service converts them to PDF and emails them to us. Saves a hell of a lot of paper, because most of what we get is spam.

We still use a fax machine at my office here in Canada.

I hate that thing, I'd rather just email a PDF, but suppliers still have a fetish for them for product orders.

Battery life was fine on mine. It ran for ages off one AA battery.

Mine wasn't a "Net MD" player, so I got music into it by recording. I had a TOS Link cable out from my sound card, and just played a playlist while it recorded. Ya, it was a bit slow that way, but MP3 players at the time were expensive and very small capacity and CD players were chunky.

Back then Office wasn't as entrenched in the business world, either. It was one of several competing systems. Businesses *depending* on Microsoft Office is something that sorta developed gradually in the last 15 years. (Document sharing over the net sorta contributed to that, making the need to get onto a single suite more urgent.)

Apparently this is a fault with autocorrect, which is enabled-system wide. If you disable it the bug doesn't work anymore.

tl;dr? ;p

I love my DSLR. Its photo quality is amazing. It is my favourite camera.

However, with it I take a fraction of the amount of photos as the camera in my phone. Why? My DSLR doesn't fit in my pocket. I'm just happy my phone has a reasonable lens and sensor in it.

Anyway, there's an old quote I heard once: The best camera is the one you have with you.

I'm a Canadian and I listen to Triple J *because* it isn't exactly mainstream. I've been listening for about 10 years, and it's really coloured my musical tastes.

Oddly enough, they play Canadian artists who don't even get airplay in Canada. (Commercial radio here is garbage.)

I live in Southern Ontario, which is generally flat as a board.

I also commute on the busiest highway in North America, which is stop-go during rush hour and packed 18-wheelers. That, and my neighbourhood has notoriously awful stoplights and drivers of a certain unrefined skill set.

So ya, automatic works for me.

Windows 8 hasn't gained traction yet. We'll see how that experiment turns out. On my Windows machines I'm sticking with 7 for the foreseeable future, and so are most people I know. Windows 8 is a weird Frankenstein's monster.

As for the Mac, I can pop into a full UNIX terminal if I feel inclined. :)

I honestly don't see what's wrong with that, as long as it's not the dumbing down of *all* computers.

Car analogy time: I can't fucking stand manual transmission, but do I understand why people like it. They can have it. But the people who like manual transmission look down upon automatic transmission and complain "it's the dumbing down of cars."

Oh, and as for "freeloaders" not being beneficial, consider this:

Firefox was established to end IE6's reign of terror on the web, and bring web standards back into play, benefiting everyone. Would they have accomplished that without the millions of "freeloaders" who eagerly downloaded and installed it, slowly chipping away at IE's numbers?

I realize that doesn't apply to every case, but it certainly does in some.

Many FOSS developers put donation links on their websites. Many users donate.

Friendliness and openness towards users leads to donations. Hostility doesn't.

I don't know what software you write, but:

a) Do you even have a donation link?
b) Are you hostile towards users? (I think I know the answer.)

In any case, from the sounds of it in this thread, you don't seem to care if another person on earth uses your software.

So basically what you're saying is that in order to have any right to complain about open source software you have to have knowledge, experience, and skill in programming? Because when you say "Why don't you submit a patch?", that's what you're implying.

Newsflash: Not every user of FOSS software knows how to program. Nor should they need to know. Unless you want it to turn into some sort of exclusive little club, in which case the worldwide share of Linux would drop by a good 99%.

Users aren't complaining because they want to be whiny or difficult. They're complaining because they see a flaw. If you want your software to be widely accepted, listen. If your software is just coding for self satisfaction, and you don't care about user adoption, then don't listen.

Play something she may find interesting, and see if she lingers watching, showing interest, then offer. Or maybe she'll even ask to try. But if you push it too hard, she'll end up resenting gaming.

I can get my girl to play Mario Kart sometimes, but other than that I just let her enjoy her own thing.