This right here.

Look at my username. LOOK AT IT.

I was a Mac-only guy back in the late 90's. I had a subscription to MacAddict magazine for several years. My first computer was a beige G3/300 running MacOS 8.1. I eventually upgraded that box to 224MB of RAM and added a Voodoo3 3000 card (with the firmware flashed for the Mac).

I hated Windows and everything it stood for. But I started using white-box hardware running Windows when I wanted to make Unreal Tournament maps in 2002.

When I got over that phase (in 2005 or so), I started running Linux. But it was annoying and limiting and didn't play any good games. So I went back to Windows.

Not too long after that, I switched from being a primarily PHP/Java developer to a .Net/C# developer. This was around the 2007 to 2008 time-frame, so a good, solid, paying job was nothing to scoff at just for requiring the use of Microsoft software. As I began to learn more about .Net, I found that it's the "it just works" of software development ecosystems. When Windows 7 came along, I jumped on it. Windows 8.1 was good on a tablet. Windows 10 has been just fine. And through it all, .Net has been great. I've made a comfortable living for most of the last decade doing .Net development.

Sure, I kept buying Macs up until about 2007 or so. I had an iPhone (original model) for a while. But Apple's shit just gets on my nerves. Over and over they promised things that never happened. They produced shiny hardware that never performed. They kept nerfing the software. And when OSX 10.5 came out and replaced the normal IP firewall with an application firewall, I knew it was over. I haven't bothered with a new Mac since. I have actively pushed people away from Apple products. When people ask for help with esoteric Apple issues, I tell them "I don't know anything about Apple products", which, funny enough, is what I used to say about Windows.

So I've been there, and I've done that. Your journey away from Apple is just beginning. Mine has finished, and I have no regrets about it. And Apple should take it to heart if they want to survive.

Windows is far superior to Mac OS X. So is Linux.

Having been a user of all three, and a developer on all three, systems for many years, I actually know what I'm talking about.

I would readily recommend Windows workstations and, for some tasks, servers. I would readily recommend Linux for servers. I have written software for both. I would not recommend Macs for anything, as the hardware is unimpressive and not different from anything any other PC manufacturer makes, and the software is stifling and foam-padded so as not to be "unfriendly". Personally, I find that exact quality to be rather unfriendly in and of itself.

So if you need a Fisher-Price computer, and you feel you need to pay double the market rate for it, by all means, buy an Apple. And don't be too sad when your "new" computer is poorly supported, gets cut off from necessary updates, and bogs down under the "burden" of minor software updates over the course of the next two years. Everyone who has ever bought a Mac certainly understands your pain.

I used to be a fanboi like you, and if you don't believe me, check my username.

Actually, I read a story about the current solar minimum just today, and how that has reduced the solar wind pressure. Perhaps that's the cause of the red spot on Jupiter.

Of course, that story's comments had similar "the economy is shrinking the sun" stupidity, and that's what made me think of it just now.

Not if they hand you the decoder and you run it, since that's what they expect you to do anyway.

Circumvention is when you bypass their protection by making your own decrypter. Playback is when you use their decrypter for the exact same purpose.

Only circumvention is named in the DMCA.

Windows-button commands aren't handled by explorer.exe, which is where the taskbar, start menu, folder windows, and other shell crap is run from.

I'm pretty sure Ctrl-Alt-Del (Windows Security), Ctrl-Shift-Esc (Task Manager), Win-R (Run), Win-L (Lock), and most of the rest of those sort of commands are all run by System, which is basically a fancy way of saying "the fricking WinNT kernel." That's also why you can't change them.

If explorer.exe crashes, just run another instance. It's just a damn shell. Hell, replace it if you want.

Just because it's not Linux doesn't mean it isn't properly designed in at least some ways.

Watch out, he might start using a Heisenberg Compensator. Then you're screwed.

Of course, if he uses one, he'll have to build it first, and if he can build one, he'll have earned the card back anyway.

I'm guessing that since it runs Linux, you might be able to find a copy of gcc for the OLPC (it doesn't include it out of the box) and compile OTTD. Alternatively, maybe one of the precompiled binaries on the OTTD site would work. The requisite TTDWin assets are "available", though it would be nice of Chris Sawyer to release them freely to the world now. And hey, you never know when they'll actually finish the 32-bit graphics pack for OTTD. It could be tomorrow (but probably not).

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/-/1/hi/technology/444 8788.stm