Bullshit. Sometimes you need to restart servers, and occasionally there's an issue during regular use that will require a restart to clear out. I would argue that servers would have a greater need than most of having rapid boot times to ensure that any unexpected downtime is as short as possible. But I guess I'm the lone voice of reason here.

RMS: Pay with coding skills or money to free a tablet.

Why? I have an avenue for getting the stuff I want RIGHT NOW. If free software/hardware is superior, why does it not already exist to do the same thing as I can get with non-free software/hardware?

You cannot argue superiority of free when it doesn't accomplish what people are used to doing with non-free.

As for your method of doing things the non-streaming way via Transmission/VLC, that's something only I could do with any level of comfort. My wife (and the rest of the non-geek world) prefer streaming and I can understand why, even if it ain't my thing.

If you have such contempt and hatred for your users such that you feel the need to mention their "sad little lives", I suspect it's you who's got the saddest of them all.

IT'S JUST SOFTWARE.

No. Sometimes you have to accept the fact that Microsoft might just know what they're doing and make a better project IN SOME CASES.

Powerpoint for example has little graphical hints that appear when you resize/move elements on a slide to show if edges are lines up with other elements. It ensures you can position things perfectly level with other objects as misalignment will stick out rather obviously on a big display. It's hundred's of these little improvements that seem minor on their own (which they are) that once summed together provide significant benefits over the opposition. You can make do with Impress, but you'll want Powerpoint.

And that's why MS Office still dominates. For those who are used to the little things that make life easier.

If you're been pissed off at the Linux community failing users for so long, you'd be resorting to emotive language as well. Some people just are too stubborn and won't listen to politely written complaints about the state of things. Sometimes you need to swear - don't be pious and pretend you don't do the same (verbally at least) sometimes.

Because there's demand for it from paying customers (although I wouldn't be surprised if the vast, vast majority of MATLAB users for example were Windows users, but I digress).

Adobe has presumably made some calculations, used various source of information, and made a determination that porting Photoshop and the rest of their core applications to Linux will not be profitable. FFS they've already stopped porting Adobe Reader years ago and don't patch the main Flash plugin on Linux unless a big security vulnerability is exposed.

They just don't see Linux as being that important a market. Do you really think they'd deny themselves profit? Are you so arrogant you think YOU know better than Adobe at the market they make millions in?

Do not think for a minute that the big companies that don't support Linux haven't made a calculated decision not to bother with porting software to it. No-one knocks back an increased income, but if it costs more to support it than they'd see as profit, it's a net loss and bad for business.

If you identify yourself with one of the characters on the show, it's quite possible you won't be laughing at yourself. Instead you may just feel worse that you're the brunt of jokes for "normal" people's amusement. If regular folks find the antics of these geeks funny (in a pity way), you'll start wondering if you're also laughed at (behind your back perhaps) the same way?

I don't really identify with any of the characters on the show anymore. I was perhaps close to Leonard but managed to become more "normal" and smooth the edges of my social capabilities because fuck it, being a stereotypical geek sucks. You're smart but no-one cares because you talk funny and dress inappropriately. You might be able to make good money and work on stuff you enjoy, but at the end of the day and away from work you stick out like a sore thumb because you spent your years fiddling with computers and electronics rather than socializing and fucking teenagers.

I'm sure you were totally just ready to start spending money for video entertainment.

It is true that the longer you spend time on illegal downloads, the harder it is to go legit. However, I'd argue that it's not just because of price (or the lack of it), but rather because the illegal downloads will almost always provide a SUPERIOR product compared to the legit version (of media anyway). I can get a high quality, 1080p Blu-ray rip of The Avengers in MKV format which can be played on almost any player these days, and certainly across all platforms, DRM-free and offline since it's an actual file and not a stream. You simply cannot get such an equivalent product from legit sources.

No-one legally provides Hollywood movies as a DRM-free download in an open format of a very high quality. It's all streaming these days, often with inconsistent buffering of moderate quality, requiring Windows-only players with limited functionality compared to standalone player applications. The Pirate Bay simply provides a better product, nevermind it being free. I'd pay for an equivalent quality product, but no-one is willing to sell it. THAT's why stops be from being completely legit - I don't like paying money for substandard stuff. Too many people don't know any better however.

If I was Hollywood, I wouldn't care if foreigners were accessing Hulu using VPNs. If they're technically capable of using VPNs in the first place then they're probably also capable of obtaining torrents, and I'd prefer them using Hulu and seeing ads and the like and keeping things reasonably legal then cutting them off and giving them yet another reason to say "fuck it" and move straight to torrents.

Fucking idiots these Hollywood guys are. They want all the power at all costs.

I was about to make a more civil post in reply but honestly, yours makes it for me in a similar fashion.

Although the phrase "you need my money to exist, I don't need your product to exist" sounds insightful and powerful, it's ultimately worthless because as you say, ignorant or week-minded/willed consumers will ensure that companies continue to act like dicks because there isn't enough motivation for them not to do so.

The idea that companies will get punished for being assholes has been shown time and time again to be completely bullshit because of the power of being huge and controlling the system. You can of course elect not to contribute to the system by not spending money on said assholes if you can, but they won't notice unless a significant number of people make the same decision (and publicly). And of course, this only works for luxury items that you can do without...

Sometimes I wish there were some normal musicians using Linux and that was publicised instead of these hacks. The fact that these guys get attention and regular musicians don't tells me more about the lack of Linux use in music than anything else, and that's fucking sad. Linux sucks, stop promoting it until it gets more use by pro users.

We don't deserve it. We're just too *dumb* as a species.

Fuck you. If you have or intend to have any children you'll change your tune very quickly. You MUST remain positive about the future of humanity or end up like one of those morons who thinks he knows better than everyone else but appears on the outside as a miserable cunt, someone no-one wants to spend any time with because they see the future as hopeless. Don't be one of those miserable cunts, please.

The bandwidth savvy consumer would like to download more content and play it back at any time, but do those consumers even exist as the majority anymore?

I'm one of the those aforementioned types of consumer, and I'm quite willing to admit I'm in the minority in wanting DRM-free, offline files under my control. Most people want streaming, and that's fine.

The problem is that it's one thing to be in the minority but still being service. It's another thing to not having a fucking option at ALL! No-one is willing to sell me a DRM-free, offline format of The Avengers for example... short of me buying a Blu-ray disc (and a suitable reader since I have none) and ripping it myself (which might be an illegal form of media shifting, I'd have to check what my country's position on this is). It's all about the streaming these days. Google Play has a "buy" option for certain titles but said purchases are always at the cost of the physical media versions anyway and come with restrictive DRM, so there's no advantage.

I'd be OK with being in the minority if I could still get what I wanted. But I can't. It's unfortunate that torrent sites seem to offer me exactly what I want though...

You're correct in that Steam doesn't mandate DRM for games sold on it. But it has two distinct problems:

1. Steam doesn't indicate on a game's store page if said game is DRM-free. You have to search for this information elsewhere and hope someone has the correct info. Sometime Steam will indicate if a game uses extra DRM apart from regular Steam-DRM, but I've never seen it advertise a game as DRM-free unless the developer/publisher has specifically put that info somewhere in the game's description. However, everything from GOG is DRM-free so they don't have to say anything because it's already a given.

2. Steam mandates use of a client. Even if you want to run the game outside of the client, you need the Steam client for downloading as well as updates. GOG has a client but you can easily download everything from a game's landing page once purchased. You then have an installer you can backup and the game runs via your regular desktop/Start menu shortcut. Much cleaner I think as I can then download and organize files in the way I want without dealing with the problems that can arise by using an unnecessary client.

What pisses me off the most about Steam is that its DRM is NOT EVEN NECESSARY. It doesn't stop pirating - I downloaded BioShock Infinite and Episode 2 (which contained the previous episode, all other DLC and the latest patch), installed them, copied over the modified steam_api files and ran it perfectly fine (even quicker than steam, since no client needs to be launched first and there's no "preparing" dialog window beforehand). It doesn't stop jack shit in terms of pirating, yet it's there because archaic publishers still believe that some protection is better than nothing even if that DRM has the potential to hider paying customers.

I wasted endless hours in my own brief flirtation with P2P trying to find an uncorrupted file of reasonable quality. Never again.

In other words, you weren't prepared to put in a (relatively miniscule) amount of effort and time into learning how to use P2P effectively to obtain high-quality files. It's really not that hard once you gain a bit of experience, but you were lazy.

That's fine. Not everyone has the attitude of owning control over your media. You're free to stream as much as you want... until your streaming access is blocked because the media was taken offline for whatever reason or your net connection becomes conjested/offline/throttled due to the abandonment of net-neutrality. You could have of course had personal copies of the media for offline use if you had bothered to learn a bit about how to use P2P effectively... but hey, some people only learn once things go bad.