This is not what you asked for, but it is an article summarizing the results of a number of studies (with references) plus the article writer's own personal experience.

Here is a different study that looked at the differences between complex interruptions and simple interruptions during the execution of a complex task. Bear in mind that the "complex task" was nowhere near as complex as various programming tasks can be. They found a complex task interrupted by a simple task generally cost about 4 minutes to get back into the task, and a complex task interrupted by another complex task took close to 8 minutes to get back into the task. An interesting affect they noted, however, was that when a complex task was interrupted by another complex task, when the person went back to the main task they made fewer errors for a time. That was not the case for a simple interruption.

Telling the truth is not libel. Giving the vendor advanced notice about announcing a vulnerability is not blackmail or extortion (in fact, its a public service). Furthermore, libel is not a criminal matter. Please reply with rationality, and not kneejerk-fear in the future.

probably whispered "union" and he and all his close contacts were immediately fired.

If that were true, then both of them would have some pretty serious lawsuit material. It's against the law for firing someone for wanting to unionize. Yeah, you can cover up the firing by giving another reason, but there are plenty of lawyers who would take the case (and win) anyway, since the feds are inclined to look suspiciously at any firing in close proximity to a unionization attempt.

The second link in the article talks about this, shows how they measure holistic performance for different types of web sites, and includes benchmarks comparing IE9 to other pre-release browsers. I don't suppose it occurred to you to actually read any of the article links.

But of course, clicking links in the summary to see if your question has already been addressed would slow down your posting.

If it is just a plugin, it can always be removed. Why bash it if it will get more people to cross over? They can use the plugin until they begin to get used to the various way of doing things, and if they wish, they can simply remove the plugin and begin to use it the normal way. Having a photoshop plugin would do much more for increasing the user base of the gimp than all the advertising in the world would do. My parents would be more apt to use the gimp if it had an interface more like photoshop's.

For me, that is the litmus test of if a piece of software is easy to use: If my parents can use it without my help. I installed the gimp on their computer, but soon after that, they were asking me about photoshop(which they had used on an old computer of mine). I had to show them very little on photoshop, but I found myself being asked much more about the gimp than I ever was about photoshop.

Note: I haven't used the photoshop plugin in gimp, so if my idea about what it is like it completely wrong, disregard above comments.

You suckers keep paying $50 and $60 for games and the prices will only go higher.

While I'm in the same boat as you (I just bought Bioshock for $5 through D2D), I wouldn't necessarily label people who pay full price as suckers. They're paying a premium to play right away and that's their prerogative.

This is a key problem with FOSS right here. The developers don't see the UI as being a core part of the actual product. That's fine, I suppose, if you don't want users to interact with it, but if user interfaces remain an afterthought rather than a focus, then most users who aren't themselves developers (or among the fringe that chooses FOSS on principle) will rightfully say that the FOSS alternative is a vastly inferior product. For the user, the UI is perhaps the most important aspect.

Microsoft's strength has long been in user interfaces. They have the resources to do vast amounts of market research and user testing to develop interfaces that most people can interact with and actually get desired results. FOSS products are generally produced by developers who are most interested in how to code the underlying functionality, and a GUI is just slapped on as an afterthought. Products that are successful in the market are produced by people who view the UI as being of utmost importance, not an add-on to "the actual product."

Even in proprietary software, look at Windows Vista and Windows 7 as examples of how this plays out. With Vista, Microsoft concentrated on rewriting the entire OS in modern programming languages, changing the underlying structure of how the OS utilizes memory, etc. UI changes were made, but they weren't the main driver behind the product. It flopped, due primarily to bad press resulting from some major marketing gaffes (allowing Dell, et al to claim PCs with insufficient hardware were compatible) and drivers not being ready yet when Beta/RC versions were released. The product, as it exists now, really isn't as bad as its reputation makes it out to be. But since the user experience wasn't the focus, some significant flaws there have tarnished it. The perception of the problems with the user experience in Vista are in part responsible for the market share Apple has been able to gain in recent years. It's certainly the path of attack they've taken in their advertising.

Windows 7, on the other hand, does improve on the performance of Vista and incorporates the bug fixes from its service packs, etc. But its main selling point (other than being "not Vista") is a handful of simple, but significant, UI changes. The underlying core components are essentially the same as in Vista, with the improvements from Server 2008 thrown in. But the focus was on the user experience this time around, rather than technical details, and the results are apparent. Nearly everyone who's tried the release candidate is giving it rave reviews, and the currently prevailing opinion seems to be that it's likely to be a hit in the market. The reason for this is that Microsoft focused more strongly on the experience of the user, both by adding some slick new features and by eliminating the major annoyances (obnoxious UAC, slow boot times, etc.). Some of those issues are related to underlying technology - user experience is not solely a UI issue - but unless the product is made with an eye towards how the users will interact with it ... well, they just won't.

Whenever the user experience is thought of as secondary by the developers, users will notice that they're being condescended to. For some applications, e.g. Apache, which are primarily used by server administrators, it's not always a deal breaker, but for anything "on the desktop" it's critical.

I'm not that technically savvy, which makes open source software even more problematic. I am capable googling fixes if something doesn't work, but sometimes the fixes take me so far out of my comfort zone, that I don't feel comfortable implementing them.

I tried GIMP about five years ago. (I could try it again, and see if it's improved, I know.) Photoshop just works for me. From install onwards. With GIMP, I had to use X11 which was just one more barrier to entry for me. Then the UI for GIMP was just plain difficult for me to navigate. I didn't mind those two things, but when I needed to figure out how to do something I could do in Photoshop, it took forever to google where things were, and how to do it. After a week or more of this, I gave up, and went back to Photoshop. Which sucks because I really wanted to use GIMP instead.

When I decided I was done with MS operating systems, I didn't just jump to a Mac. My husband and I loaded up several consecutive Linux distros on an old PC to see if I could do that. The amount of fiddling was way more than I wanted. If I could have just loaded it up once, and had it work, I never would have bought a Mac. This is what I mean by not being technically savvy as a drawback for open source. Sure, I can google up answers, but sometimes they are way over my head. I can ask for help, but I have found again and again, that if you are not a computer whiz (and maybe if you are) sometimes you get a lot of crap for not RTFM. What if you are just an artsy housewife that wants to figure out a simple daily issue, like email, or layering in GIMP, or where the blasted button is for whatever? The barrier for entry is too high unless you are more technically capable.

It's not that I'm not buying Wii games deliberately out of spite. I'm not buying them because there hasn't been much that has interested me. I'm looking forward to Contra Rebirth on WiiWare and Super Mario Kart whenever the heck they decide to release it in North America.

Another annoying thing about Nintendo for me is their love of peripherals. Wii Motion Plus should be $10 max, not $25 (Here in Canada). So now if you want to buy a new Nunchuk/Wii Remote/Motion plus combo you are coming in at about $100! A tad pricey IMO. At some point I may break down and get it when a game I want warrants it, but since its rather expensive I'm not buying it without thinking twice. I think Nintendo is hurting themselves by pricing it so high. I know the high price sentiment has prevented other friends from buying it and the games that work with it, especially since so few games do at the moment. Yeah I know it is packed in with Wii Sports Resort and Tiger Woods 10, but if you get Resort you pretty much have to buy another Motion Plus since its predominately a multi player game. No thanks Nintendo, I've already blown enough on Wii peripherals for the time being.

Are you guys really admins?

Script what you would do manually. It's not that hard to determine your distro and thus which app to use to update. Determine how you manage manually and just start BASH'ing it out in a script to do the same thing remotely. SSH keys will be required. Then set up sudo on each system to allow you to run certain commands passwordless. Just be sure to use ssh -t when connecting so that sudo will work properly.

Really, this is admin 101. Any good admin should be able to script. If you can't, then start learning; Or you will only ever be a mediocre admin.