Didn't have that problem . . .

I just performed two Windows 7 installations, and both instances warned me about lack of firewall, antivirus, and having Windows Updates turned off until I either rectified the issue or explicitly disabled the warning.

Where's the camera?

Clearly, these "boffins" have been spying on my family Christmas! Well, I've got them beat this year--I'm staying home with a carton of egg nog and a bottle of whiskey, and I'm not leaving.

Xobni (Spam)

Spam? Spammity spam spam spam. Spam. Spam spam spam spam. Spam, spam, spam. Spam! SPAM. Spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam.

Baked beans.

Spam.

Gallons

Glad to see The Reg is using proper units. I came to www.theregister.com, not www.theregister.co.uk or some such nonsense!

So, yes

In short, it is just like Windows, since the reason for Windows needing to reboot is because software updates (wait for it) binary modules which are part of the OS! Windows needs to reboot much less than it once did, while Mac OS needs to reboot more (apparently).

Support costs

I'm guessing that Dell's qualifications come from being burned by consumers buying Linux PCs and then freaking out because they aren't running Windows.

@Lord Elpuss, Open Office is not MS Office, and the UI and functionality are sufficiently different to make the disclaimer worthwhile. You can do the "same job," but you can't run the *same software* which is a non-trivial distinction. I just love how the Linux crowd cry "FUD" as a knee-jerk reaction to anyone who doesn't have their lips firmly wrapped around Linus' pole. Don't forget to cup the balls, guys.

So, let's recap the fanboi comments

If you reported problems with the upgrade:

1) You're lying.

2) You're spreading FUD.

3) It's your fault.

4) You should have done a scratch install instead of an upgrade.

5) You're obviously too clueless and incompetent to use a computer, much less run Linux.

Glad to see that, whatever changes Linux itself has undergone in the past few years, the community remains just the same.

@AC

I think the Pope should hand out free condoms, but that's not likely to happen either.

Setting the record straight

The USA = America, which is in North America, which is one of The Americas.

Canada = the 52nd State of the USA (Britain is #51).

Came for the frothing fanboi hate . . .

. . . leaving satisfied.

Grrr

obSpellingNitpick: voila is a purloined French word meaning, roughly, "there it is." A viola is a musical instrument.

"As far north as the Mason-Dixon line"

So, nowhere important is at risk, then.

I guess it's true...

Bing

Is

Not

Google

@ThomH

Ooh, you slagged Opera. Now you'll pay! Await the wrath of the small but vocal Opera fanboi community!

@JimC

Good cast . . . now reeeeeel them in, nice and slow.

I see . . .

that both of the Opera users have weighed in. Here's some beer for you to cry in.

Crown Prosecution Service

I read that as "Clown Prosecution Service." I'm guessing I'm not the first one.

@Mad Hacker

Two problems:

1) Once someone has already caused an accident, chances are good that someone else is dead or injured, so penalizing someone after the fact is of no use to the injured party.

2) No one thinks that he/she is the problem, so removing the penalties for dangerous behavior will, in theory, cause an upswing in the behavior, resulting in additional accidents.

Operating a multi-ton vehicle is a privilege, not a right, and dictating safe behavior when doing so actually seems to me like a reasonable use of government power.

FFS

Nothing like a political article to bring down the level of intelligence, coherence, spelling, and grammar in the comments. From what benighted hole did you guys crawl?

Proof that the Internet makes you stupid

Dear Flickrers, Flickr was created to *make a profit,* you fucking ignoramus dingleberries. The founders have succeeded in this goal by selling the company off to Yahoo!, pocketing (sorry, trousering, forgot what site I was on) shedloads of cash and leaving you sorry bastards to whine impotently on the forums. You now have two choices:

1) Suck it up

2) Start your own Web site

You can forestall #1 with continued whining, but we know that you're all too bloody useless to do #2 (except for poo-flinging purposes, of course).

Two things

One: In before the complaintards bitching about the use of Fahrenheit in the temperature.

Two: On a more serious note, pity the poor engineer who has to work on hardware in that environment! 90 degrees? Oh, hell no. The pathetic meatbags are going to be the ones who need coolers, never mind the hardware.

To summarize

At the moment, no comments have been posted, so let me see if I can summarize the salient points of this thread before any show up:

1) Firefox has become bloated and inefficient, and the developers should go back to the 2.x/1.x/0.x code base.

2) Opera did it first, back in 1975.

3) "Windows sucks anyway so this is just one more reason to use FreeBSD Linux."

4) Generalized Ribbon interface hatred followed by repeated posts pointing out the obvious fact that changing back to the menu-driven interface will be simply accomplished by switching the theme.

I'll check back later to see if I missed anything.

It's just . . .

Games

CAD

Excel

Drivers

Devices

Etc.

The fact is that Windows has better support for all of these things. Linux is slightly more stable (as long as you have the right drivers and kernel modules) and ideologically 99.44% pure (not as pure as GNU Hurd, of course, but close), but the Windows ecosystem is much broader, and that alone keeps people attached to Windows.

Fuck Ubuntu

I just installed Ubuntu 9.04 (Insipid Imbecile or whatever), and Firefox 3.5 isn't in the repository, and in order to install it by hand, I would have to break compatibility with the repository. I also got dependency issues when trying to add, remove, or upgrade various packages. I haven't checked out all the packages, but the inability to even install software in a coherent manner except as provided by the package manager is a massive failure. The GNOME UI still looks like it was designed by a three year old (or, you know, a Linux programmer). I can only imagine that this is considered "good enough" by people who have never encountered "better."

I've made Ubuntu my whipping boy because it's supposed to be the most user-friendly Linux, and it probably is, but boy, as has been pointed out in these comments, you sure (only) get what you pay for.

@MIS and AC

Should we also get off your lawns?

What this has to do with Linux

GNOME and KDE are the most commonly-used GUIs for Linux and closely tied to that OS. Pretending otherwise involves needless pedantry. As Tanuki points out, consistency is key. I would add to that the ability to get useful system administration done instead of having to drop to the CLI for virtually any configuration task. Not being fugly would be good, too.

Wrong acronym

By the time this gets approved, I doubt that I will be the first to point out that the correct acronym is obviously PEW, as in "Pew pew pew!"

Firing lasers . . .

Record-setting

Are they going to try to set a Guinness record for fewest downloads on release day?

I'm going, I'm going.

@John J

There's links or lynx for your purposes. Who needs graphics, anyway?

Can't wait . . .

. . . for all the comments saying that, no matter how much good Gates does, he's still made of pure evil for the heinous crime of being tremendously effective at selling mediocre software.

HP - ditto

I ordered a bunch of VMware licenses from HP, who shipped out a giant box . . . containing eight smaller boxes . . . each containing a plastic CD holder . . . each containing a VMware license redemption code. Not the license itself, mind you, which would have been almost useful, but a single-use code allowing me to get my licenses from VMware which were--wait for it--delivered electronically. The giant box was also packed with inflatable cushions, lest the effectively-empty boxes within be damaged.

I'm now sad I didn't take pictures.

Twitter

Twitter == twat + litter

RAID-DP

I'm less knowledgeable about the guts of RAID algorithms than other commenters, but I do know this: RAID-DP is not the same as RAID 6 in that RAID-DP is proprietary RAID algorithm belonging to NetApp. In any case, there are solutions beyond throwing more expensive disk resources at the problem; Xiotech, for example, has architected their solution to bypass one of the causes of the bathtub curve, namely vibration resonance in disk enclosures. They also allow for much more efficient use and reuse of disks. Not that I'm intending to be a shill, mind you, I just think the technology is cool.

Facebook usage

I just wanted to take the time to point out that the way I use and configure Facebook is superior to the way everyone else does it, and all those people are clearly idiots.

iTunes

Came for the comments about iTunes being a virus, leaving satisfied. Although, in fairness, most viri are much more efficient and cause less load on the system than iTunes.

DIY

To those of you advising building a NAS with ZFS, you seem entirely to be missing the point. Drobo is not targeting DIY geeks who are happy to cobble together a fileserver out of spare parts but rather the other 99.9999% of humanity.

Panties

Getting Mac users' panties in a wad is about as hard as getting to spend a night in Paris.

@Chris Morley and others

A tautology is a circular argument. If British English doesn't have a word for "redundancy," that would explain why Americans had to repurpose it.

What's interesting to me is that the French-hating English (the people not the language) have opted to keep their language as close to French as possible instead of allowing it to evolve away as America has done.

On a more serious note, American English is a dialect, not an accent.

@Michael C

You just missed the perfect post there; if only you had closed with "Now get off my lawn."

Orange?

I'm sorry, I pointed my browser to http://www.theregister.com, not http://www.theregister.co.uk. Why am I having to read about this pointless Limey cell carrier nonsense?

Why now?

Clearly the government has been hiding something. Why didn't they put this Web site up back in 1969 right after the launch? This is just another sham to conceal the use of a sound stage on Mars to fabricate the lunar landing!

Paging Ted Dziuba...

... FAIL detected.

1) Data Domain boxes actually do have a VTL mode, it's just an add-on.

2) DD may not have direct tape duplication functionality, but that can certainly be done by software.

3) DD also does post-process dedupe on top of inline.

Other than that, great article.

All righty, then

There's another reason not to buy a Kindle.

Also, Paxil would be more likely to sponsor Brave New World than 1984.

@Apocalypse Later

Mmm, neocon tears: sweet, refreshing, delicious. Thanks for allowing me to enjoy my daily dose of schadenfreude!

Sue everyone!

Clearly, rather than take responsibility for the raising of their own children, the only recourse is for parents to sue everyone. MySpace is only the first stop. After that, it's clear that Tim Berners-Lee should be held liable for inventing the Web, the telcos should be held responsible for carrying the traffic, DARPA should be sued for inventing the Internet, Cisco, Juniper, et al. should be sued for building the equipment that allowed the traffic to be carried, MySpace's colocation facilities are clearly responsible for housing the vile site, and finally the rest of humanity as a class should be hauled into court to face the music for not preventing the little Julies from falling prey to these molesters.

Nuke the site from orbit, it's the only way to be sure.

@AC22:04

Lighten up, Francis. Anyway, the same technology will be coming to Blighty just as soon as we formally make you our 51st state, so the news is still relevant to you.

Coming from Opera . . .

It will be innovative yet so appallingly ugly to look at that no one will use it.

IAWTPC

Everything that he said and more. Sharepoint's version control is crap: it's unable to track deltas, instead just making multiple copies of changed files (imagine doing that with Powerpoint or giant Excel spreadsheets!), and it only works for documents, not for actual site content. Also, backing it up reliably is a huge pain in the ass. Sharepoint is an overengineered POS which constitutes a nightmare to deploy and administer; it may be acceptable for users, but there are plenty of solutions which do almost as much for substantially less time, effort, pain, and money.

@Hollerith

You must be a load of fun at parties.

@Smokers: You can smoke as long as I can piss in your face to extinguish the cigarette. It's all about respecting my choice, doncha know.