How these tools are used and % of userbase that cares about them:

Windows:

- <- Developers
------------------- <- Everyone else

Linux:

------------------- <- Developers
- <- Everyone else

Do you really think the average office worker cares about examining mount points or finding out how many USER handles a process is using? That's why Microsoft doesn't ship any of that with Windows, and they probably never will. More importantly, I'd rather have a third party write these kinds of tools. They're not limited by what marketing and support think is a good idea to ship. If Microsoft made them they probably wouldn't be as useful - not to mention everyone would whine about how they're evil because they're killing a niche.

As long as these tools are available, I could care less where I have to get them from or what I couldn't do before I install them. Duh.

You just know that he would have demanded that Linux be called 'GNU/Linux' and so on. He's known for turning down speaking engagements from people who refuse to do that, too.

I beginning to think Richard Stallman is techdom's Michael Jackson. Once brilliant, his past work is appreciated by all... but he currently exists in a vacuum where he lives off his dwindling reputation and fawning attention of a few creepy adoring fans while everyone else just scratches their heads and wonder what the hell happened to him.

If we missed something that big about to hit Jupiter what else are we missing? I hope to hell that's not an impact feature.

And where the hell is Bruce Willis??

I have no idea what you just said.

These always make me smile. Microsoft, the big bad outsourcer. You're going to move IBM as well? IBM is the largest consumer of L1 visas in the US. These are much more insidious than the evil H1-Bs, I suggest reading up on them.

I don't know if you've ever interacted with IBM - specifically IBM Global Services (aka IBM India), but lately I've been thinking that the only American left in that company is Palmisano. Everyone else has to be either Indian or Chinese. I jest - just slightly.

While you're at it, send all the large financial and services companies in the US. Heck, just transfer the entire Fortune 1000 over there. That will take care of your problems.

Oh and BTW, I love the "Ballmer was at it again" bit here. Any chance of the submitter actually mentioning which CEOs have lobbied Washington for increased quotas and more relaxed requirements? Naaah, that doesn't sell any ad impressions nowadays.

Virtual PC was and always will be a desktop solution. It's what MS uses for XP mode in Vista. Virtual Server is the big box equivalent (although I suppose it's based off VPC).

several apps written by Apple itself don't follow standard UI conventions

Not following interface guidelines in itself is quite common on both Windows and OS X, but that usually has nothing to do with the lack of a unified platform UI.

The Windows situation is even worse: there are several native toolkits there

You're confusing the shell's control library with the stack used to access it. On Windows when you write a .NET, WTL, MFC or plain Win32 application, you're still targeting the Windows shell native controls.

When has [anyone] ever released an OS that wasn't a support nightmare [when it's actually put in the hands of users]?

All better now?

And I think he (Potts) sucks at singing.

I hate opera, so that might have something to do with it. But I do like the "crossover" artists like Andrea Boccelli and Sarah Brightman and that other british chick whose name I forget right now.

But Potts is nowhere near being a proper opera singer.

These are the same analysts whose opinion is dismissed when the say anything positive about Microsoft, but when they say something worth spinning negatively, it makes the Slashdot front page.

An OEM copy of Windows XP Pro goes for about $40 these days. I don't know where you got that $70 figure, unless you're talking about the OEM version that you get on TigerDirect, which no actual OEM uses.

Installing the average Linux distro is no longer hard either, and hasn't been for a few years, but that doesn't stop idiots from claiming it is when they're trying to come up with arguments against using that OS. Funny how that works, eh?

BSODs are caused by bad drivers and/or bad hardware, nothing more. Fix that and they go away. It's that simple. I'd feel stupid if I claimed my car sucks because I was putting in the wrong transmission fluid, so to fix the problem I just bought another car.

the Blue Screen of Death

1996 called, he wants his meme back.

Did they also push an evil midget through teh intertubes that forced you to code in C# at gunpoint? I must have missed that the last time I ran Windows Update.

Java isn't as an independent technology.

Independent of whom? Sun Microsystems? And have you established that absolutely none of the Java source infringes on anyone's patents?