I could so do a Wierd Al themed karaoke party. Personally though, I'd lean more towards some of his older stuff... and if I was feeling sadistic a few of his polkas (nothing like doing 18 songs in all of 2 minutes). To this day there are a number of songs that I can't hear without hearing the Wierd Al versions, and similarly a few of them that I can't hear without picturing some AMVs (the AMV that was part of AMV Hell 3 with all the Rei's set to "I think I'm a clone now" is one of them).

... *shifts nervously*... uhm... if I were to tell you that I've never seen Heroes, although it's on my list of shows to buy at some point (along with Battlestar Galactica and the rest of Farscape) would I be permanently shunned and/or stoned to death?

Windows security does suck, but honestly the security on OS X, and even Linux isn't that much better. The main reason you don't see many viruses and worms targeted at OS X or LInux is simply a case of effort versus return on investment. Since windows is the dominant OS of your average clueless user, and there are plenty of windows systems around that are easily compromised it's simply not worth their effort to spend the time required to infect OS X. Interestingly enough, I've seen plenty of Linux systems cracked, although never in a way that wasn't blatantly obvious. In the case of Linux systems their interested in servers and rely on them not being carefully monitored as opposed to Windows in which they can more easily hide their activities. If the situation was reversed, and OS X had a 60% or better market penetration most viruses and worms would be written for OS X.

He's either trolling, or ignorant, either way ignore him. If he wishes to learn something he can read the comments on here, there's not much else to be done.

On a related note, does ID have a ignore capability or threshold? I know on some moderation systems if a comment gets modded low enough it becomes hidden, any such thing here?

Depends a lot on what you do with it to how much you notice the warts (and how long you've been using it, they've fixed a lot of them, and I do mean a lot). Vista has almost reached the point of being about as stable as pre-SP1 XP, which is still a lot better than ME ever managed, but less than most other OSes.

The whole thing is mostly moot anyway, as Vista was just a stop gap for MS to get something to market till they could roll out Windows 7. I've said it in the past, and I'll say it again now, Vista is the new Windows ME. ME was created as a temporary patch in between 98 and XP that was put together by stapling pieces of XP on to a 98 core, and it showed quite often when pieces fell off. Vista is the same thing, it's pieces of Windows 7 stapled onto a XP core and it to shows its rickety providence. Is Vista the most terrible OS ever created? Hardly, but XP SP2 is still better, and that's not the way to roll out a new product. When your previous version performs better than your new version, you're doing it wrong.

Yes and no. Vista asks you to click ok anytime you do anything that might in any way potentially mess something up. It should be noted that there are a lot of things you do every single day that have the potential to possibly mess something up, as well as the fact that the popups don't actually ask you if you want to do whatever it was you just tried to do, at least not in a way your average user is able to understand. That was the biggest failing of the so called "security" in Vista, it doesn't provide enough feedback to the user about what exactly it is that they're saying "ok" to, which in many regards is worse than not even asking in the first place. The first time it happens, the user is rightfully worried and reads over the message carefully. Not being able to understand exactly what it's asking they say ok, and wait for something bad to happen, and when nothing does they assume everything is ok. Repeat 10 or 20 times over a period of a week or so of regular use, and the user quickly learns that anytime that particular popup comes up, just click yes. It defeats the entire purpose, and trains the user that warning popups aren't important. A warning that can't be understood by the user, is less useful than not having a warning at all.

I've thought of ways of dealing with this problem, and could go on at length about it, but this really isn't the place for it, and I doubt Joel would care for me to fill up his comments thread with paragraph upon paragraph of OS design and security discussion (not that I haven't already made a start of it, sorry Joel).

PC is a generic term for anything that isn't a mainframe system, and arguably anything not rack-mounted. Considering that almost all computers these days, barring legacy hardware and the few bits of custom systems used for very specialized industries, are constructed of the same basic hardware (I.E. 80x86 CPUs with matching motherboard, flavor of the month RAM, PATA/SATA/SCSI/SAS storage peripherals, and PCI/PCIx/PCIe expansion cards) other than the form factor of the enclosing case and the relative clock speeds/capacities of the components involved there's virtually no difference between any modern computers from a hardware standpoint.

PC, being an acronym for Personal Computer, just about anything small enough to fit on a table counts as a PC. Of course, in modern usage PC is usually used to refer to IBM compatible PCs, but since IBM compatible just means it uses the 80x86 instruction set, and all consumer AMD and Intel chips use the 80x86 instruction set, it's really still the same thing. So, in short, as Joel said, nearly all computers today count as a PC, even under the slightly more restrictive usage of IBM compatible PC. Exceptions to this rule would be (arguably) the Itanium Intel processors, and the Sparc series of processors by Sun, although either one realisticly still qualifies under the older less restrictive definition of a PC.

No, the OS provides too many functions and is too critical to the security of the computer to be completely marginalized. It's a common argument I hear that the OS won't matter and we'll all move to a thin client model, but that ignores the fact that even in a thin client system we need at least a minimal OS to authenticate the servers we connect to to provide our functionality. There's also the problem that unless we move to a system in which there's no external hardware (IE usb thumbdrives, cds, DVDs, iPods, etc.) then you still need an OS to provide the drivers and interface with that external hardware. The only way a truly dumb terminal can function is if it merely acts as a display and input device, ala keyboard and monitor, and it has to have a direct hardline connection to the underlying system. The minute you must perform any sort of unverifiable routing (IE the internet), or attach random hardware a thin client no longer works.

This also is going backwards technologically in many regards, back to the old mainframe days. Part of the reason our computing power has exploded so drastically is the ability to distribute computing across a wide area. We may move into a co-op style system in which computing tasks are farmed out to various computers on the network, potentially transparently to the user (see the various @home projects), but I don't think we'll ever move to a truely dumb terminal system because even when the processing is distributed across a "cloud" of nodes, each of those nodes must in turn run some sort of OS.

OSes are actually something I've put a lot of thought into. For instance, if tomorrow I won the lottery and never had to work again, one of the first things I'd work on would be to write the OS I've always wanted. The problem is really that no one has done it completely "right" yet, although different companies (and individuals) have gotten pieces correct over the years, none of them have been able to bring all the right pieces together. Apple for instance understands how to make things relatively intuitive and simple for the user. They do not understand how to make things powerful (or secure), and they're really more in the hardware business than they are software. Microsoft knows business. They know how to work the CEOs, and how to convince PHBs that they absolutely cannot afford to not throw piles of money at Microsoft. They've also managed to lock down game developers primarily because there's no real competition in that space. Microsoft absolutely does not understand security in even the most remote fashion, and they're UI is a middle ground approach, too complicated for a novice, and too simple for an advanced user. Linux (and its UNIX cousin) get power users, and has the best overall security of all (which is still a far cry from what it "should" be), but seriously suffers from lack of a unified vision, and a simple interface. Linux is powerful, and when you've massaged all the wrinkles out it's a glorious thing, but it requires attention and careful maintenance. It's a bit like an old muscle car, you can do amazing things with it, but it's not really the best solution for your soccer moms and anyone that really just wants things to work out of the box.

All three major options have things that they do right, things the excel at, and some of those things are mutually exclusive (for instance you cannot have a single interface that pleases both novice users, and experienced users at the same time), but all of them fail overall at providing a good user experience. To a certain extent, until something better comes along we really just need to use whatever is most appropriate for us in whichever situation we find ourselves, although we shouldn't be complacent about the state of things.

Eh... so, what's my point? Operating Systems suck, all of them, in their own unique ways, so just use whichever one works best for you, and anyone that says you're wrong for whatever choice you've made doesn't really understand that nature of the market.

Oh, and the whole Apple vs. PC thing is a misnomer, it should be Apple Hardware and Software vs. Commodity Hardware and Windows, but that title is a bit long and pedantic to make a good ad campaign. As for the Vista ads... uh, y eah, wtf?

The CC near me has never had good service in any way shape or form. In particular since they stopped giving out commission a while back it's just about impossible to find any employees there that give a crap about anything, not that I particularly blame them, if I worked in retail I probably wouldn't give a crap either.