Conclusion: Neither the left nor the right in the US is fascist. Hooray! The left is closer than the right, but neither is very close.
I'm not an American (thank bloody god) so I can say that I'm not affiliated with your "right" or your "left" parties. To the rest of the world they both look right-wing, but I digress.
What is obvious is that your country is overrun with these asshats who insist on turning every single political discussion into "right vs left". It's quite sad. It really devalues any discussion. If I, as a totally unbiassed foreigner, was asked what was harming America most, so we all know that's never going to happen because since when does America care what the rest of the world thinks, I would say it was all of these knee-jerk morons who can't think for themselves but insist on voicing their simplistic "us vs them" politics.
I can't speak for the grandparent but I installed mono-1.1.6 by building the source package. Add "deb-src http://manno.name/debian/ hoary main cvs" to your sources.list, apt-get source mono, then dpkg-buildpackage. It builds pretty cleanly.
Heck, its a pain in the ass sometimes to get simple brain-dead stuff such as printing and mounting a drive working.
People are aware of these problems and they are being fixed. Setting up a printer is immeasurably simpler now than it was 5 years ago. Automatically mounting a drive does work properly with recent builds of GNOME (thanks to the Utopia project). I realise that's little consolation to anybody who wants the software now. However it is a sure sign that the problems are not intrinsic; it's just a matter of time until these features work as well on Linux as on other desktops.
If an anecdote would help, I was using Linux back when installing packages involve "mount/dev/fd0H1440/mnt ; zcat/mnt/X.base.tar.Z | tar xvf -" and configuring X11 involved calculating modelines on a piece of paper. I had to edit the TWM configuration files to add menu entries. The best graphical application was "xfig"; install it and experience the state of the art from only a few years ago. The Linux desktop has progressed an INCREDIBLE distance from those early days.
We were sick of not having an Exchange replacement (don't get me started on the open source ones now "available").
Why didn't you use Exchange? Evolution can use an Exchange backend server. I don't understand your reasoning that you had to tear out the Linux desktops because of a missing server component.
- Give me the 25 most frequently played songs by either Spears, Beyonce, or Aguilera, added in the past 6 months, that are longer than 3 mins but shorter than 5.
It has nothing to do with "interference" with the electronic systems on the plane. Rather it's a social engineering trick. You see, when you're at 10,000 feet all the mobiles are out of reception range. So any calls or SMS are temporarily diverted to voicemail or messagebank. When the plane lands, suddenly every phone is in reception and all the stored voicemails and SMS flood through to every mobile on the plane. Simultaneously every mobile starts that stupid BEEP BEEP BEEP noise that lets you know about your stored messages. Imagine 700 mobiles all going BEEP BEEP BEEP in unison! It's enough to drive you mad. The flight attendants got pissed off at the noise and cleverly invented this cock and bull story about "interference". Now the mobiles are turned off until you reach the baggage claim area where everybody turns on their mobile phones and annoys the baggage claim attendants instead. You see, the flight attendants have this secret war going on with the hated baggage claim attendants; you and your mobile phones are merely pawns in their devious mind games. Muahahaha.
If you look further back at older projects such as BSD Unix and XFree86, you may notice that there isn't nearly as much of this explosion of forks and competing projects. BSD only has five OSS offspring that I can think of - Free, Open, Net, Darwin, and Dragonfly.
BSDI, SunOS, 386BSD, dozens of others. Though I'm guessing you're only counting BSD offspring that are still "alive".
Compare this with the Linux community, where there are oodles of different distributions - many with only minor differences in architecture or philosophy - in a constant state of flux.
I think that has more to do with the relative sizes of the communities. Linux has significantly greater numbers of users and developers. I think projects would fork sooner if software was easier to write. However software isnt easy to write so forks occur at a rate in proportion to the number of highly skilled developers. I saw this also with XFree86/Xorg. It wasn't that forks weren't desired long before the Xorg split but rather that there were very few developers with sufficient talent to sustain a fork. Fortunately the leads on the Xorg split are two of the best X developers that ever existed.
On one hand, this culture leads to a tremendous amount of exploration and innovation -
I also see it as good for survival. History is littered with the corpses of software that chose the wrong path at the wrong time. The flexibility of Linux means that it exists in every niche at once. If one niche dries up, Linux will continue to thrive in any of the other 100s of niches.
looking at your member number and you obvious anti-apple bias im rather confused why you have yet to turn off apple storys.
Uhh, my anti-apple bias? You're kidding, right? I'm typing this from a PowerBook and this is my fifth Apple computer in the past decade. I love Apple Computers. Steve Wozniak is the Geek God. Steve Jobs is inspirational. The Apple II was so great it made men weep with joy. Macs are great, that's why I keep buying them. I'm personally responsible for several PC -> Mac conversions; people ask me which computer to buy and I tell them "a Mac".
Now, Apple fanboys, that's something I really hate. This thread has been the perfect example of everything I hate about you guys. I point out how useless these "Minor Upgrade to Existing Apple Software" stories are, and I get accusations that I'm "anti-apple". Remove your fanboy chips from those lumps of meat you laughably call your brains, because they're affecting your ability to think.
The article? You mean the product announcement on the Apple website. Yes, I did read it.
Now, as also mentioned the concept that the apps were "proprietary". What exactly do you mean by proprietary? Like as in it isn't FOSS or like it doesn't work with other people's stuff? I invite you to take the Pepsi challenge and see for yourself.
Riiiight, so are you saying that this software isn't proprietary?
I hope we've all learned something here today. I for one have learned that people are far more apt to make mindless comments that learn about what it is that they think they dislike.
I've learnt that Apple fanatics have blinkers the size of solar sails.
Honestly, I thought the "Linux 2.6.11-rc2 released" articles were bad enough, but the incessant Apple product announcements are even worse. Is it really worth mentioning every single product that Apple releases? It's not even new software, it's just a bundle of existing proprietary software.
And as far as why they were brought in... They were most likely brought in because these decision making people have no freaking clue.
It's bad practise for the IT staff to conduct their own pen-testing and their own security audits. Hiring an independent consultant to audit the environment is sensible, not clueless.
A consonsultant with buzzwords comes in and flashes some fancy tech jargen and charges huge amounts of money looks really appealing to those types.
It's up to the IT staff to tell the boss if they got good value for money. Blaming the boss for not knowing about technical stuff is plain unprofessional. It's your job to keep the boss informed.
How do you handle these 3rd-party security people who make mountains out of every molehill?
They've done nothing wrong. It's their job to point out every molehill. It's your job to perform a threat/risk assessment for each molehill and present a range of mitigations to your boss. For example:
Consultick: Your froobnabbit has a zingle rating of -1.4582 which we consider to be a serious security hole as documented in Babbage's Grand Compendium of Security Risks. You: The likelihood of an intrusion via the froobnabbit is negligible for the following reasons. Even if the froobnabbit is compromised, the impact is minimal and to non-core services. Our group considers the overall risk to our organisation to be low. However we can further mitigate the risk with the following options that will cost you $X, $Y and $Z respectively. Boss: Nah, stuffit, we'll leave the froobnabbit as is. I thank both of you for looking into this problem and giving me the information I need to make an informed decision.
This honestly isn't rocket science. The consultick isn't out to destroy you. He's just doing his job. And yes, it's amusing that the consulticks charge huge amounts of money to run nmap and Nessus, but they were only brought in because you obviously don't have the time to do it yourself.
I get the impression that you've taken this as a personal slight. I think that you believe the consultick's report has made you look bad. Get over it. Maybe you have made a mistake. Maybe you haven't. Your boss doesn't know yet because he isn't informed. Informing your boss of the risks and the costs raised by the consultick's report should be your #1 priority. If you do a good job, you and the consultick will both look good.
To most end users, a consistent look and feel, that works right out of the box, is really important. So it's a very good thing that Linux distributions are improving in this area (which the article conveniently forgets to mention).
It wasn't important to Windows 3.1 users.
Hell, it still isn't important to Windows XP users.
If people cared about something that "works right out of the box" or a "consistent look and feel" then Windows wouldn't be a significant player at all.
People care about *price* first and *effort* second. Some people will crawl through mud to save a nickel. We call those people "the majority".
Any idiot who thinks Windows works "right out of the box" has obviously never tried to use Windows "right out of the box". It's a disaster of epic proportions. Drivers and viruses and stupid configuration dialogs you need a masters degree[1] to decipher. The unpaid labour that any tech geek bestows on his family and friends, supporting and fixing their effing bleeding blinding crappy Windows boxes, is the only reason that Windows is used at all by the general population.
And consistency? What the hell is consistent about the Windows interface? WMP9 looks nothing like Notepad looks nothing like Office XP looks nothing like Symantec anything looks nothing like Adobe anything. They're all freaking different. Even worse are these new schizoid applications that think they're the offspring of Shockwave and an acid trip. They look nothing like ANY version of Windows that has ever existed.
So don't give me that shit about "consistent look and feel" or "works right out of the box". I laugh at the mere suggestion.
Why is that so hard to believe? I have 34GB of entirely legit content. Admittedly I rip at 192kbps and it's taken 10 years to build my CD collection, but I don't think it's an unusually large collection.
Who would want to buy a crippled operating system?
Because you can't afford the uncrippled version?
Seriously, if you need Windows for whatever reasons, and you can't afford to buy the uncrippled version, and you're adverse to the illegal and arguably immoral copying of software that belongs to Microsoft, then the crippled version is the next best thing.
Even our most prized and well written scientists believe in God. Einstein believed in God,
No, he really didn't.
It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it. -- Einstein
Or even better...
From the viewpoint of a Jesuit priest I am, of course, and have always been an atheist.... I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one. You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth. I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our being. -- Einstein
Of course, Christians like to repeat the lie that Einstein believed in their particular god. You're not one of those lying Christians, are you?
They are a company. Their sole point of existance is to make money. They aren't a charity FFS.
What is it with you Americans and this dogged obsession with "companies only exist to make money"?
Making money isn't the sole point of a company. Companies exist to fulfil their owners objectives as expressed by the mission statement. A side product of fulfilling those objectives is to make money, because an unprofitable company won't fulfil the objectives for very long.
Money is a means to an end, not the end in and of itself. Companies exist to make cars, build furniture, produce electricity, sell food, provide services, and literally 1000s of other purposes. Making money is part of that process, but it is not the actual objective.
When CEOs forget the company's objectives and pursue making money, that's when a company fails. Witness what's happening to HP; Carly tried to make more profit at the expense of the companies objectives. Thanks to her, HP might as well be dead. All the brilliance that once embodied "all things HP" has vanished. They are now a hollow shell of their former selves; little more than an expensive kind of Dell. Companies that focus on their objectives make money without even trying; look at Google.
For an even better example, look at Apple. In the mid-90s, during the absence of Steve, Apple lost sight of their objective; building the best personal computers. They started to produce some godawful crap like the PowerMac 4400. They wanted to make more money by producing a "cheap Mac" and selling to a larger audience. Combined with a whole lot of other boneheaded schemes to "make money quick", Apple almost went bankrupt. That's because the guys in charge never understood what Apple was all about.
Steve comes back and reinstates his vision of producing the best personal computers. Bam, Apple is back in the black and the industry darling again. Is Steve a brainiac? No. Is he just lucky? No. He simply knows to focus on the company's core objectives and that's why Steve's companies always succeed. Whether he's at Pixar or Apple, he pursues the objectives first, knowing full well that the money will come after.
Stop pursuing the money. Counterintuitively that's not how you make money! Make a great product, or provide a great service, and money will come naturally. That's how great companies and great people manage to succeed.
IIRC there is no GPL issue with the kernel loading non-GPL'd modules, at least as far as Linus is concerned.
Linus doesn't have any legal training and/or qualifications so his opinion isn't gospel. In any event you haven't understood what he actually said.
Linus said that kernel drivers which are not derivative works don't fall under the GPL. However drivers that are derivative works do fall under the GPL. He gave two examples. One was the nvidia driver, where clearly the majority of the code was developed independently. He was OK with that driver. His other example was a driver that exposed kernel internals using a GPL'd patch and used those internals in the binary driver. That driver was a derivative work of the kernel, so he put his foot down.
Turner acknowledges that binary-only drivers are a sore spot with free software purists, but says he'd "rather have a fully functional, if closed, Nvidia driver than a reverse-engineered one that limps along."
Then go use Windows, damnit.
Linux is stable because of the paucity of binary device drivers. Binary drivers are hard to debug, they have undocumented behaviour, they tie the user into a specific platform and version of the kernel, they make it harder for the kernel developers to fix architectural flaws with Linux without breaking all the drivers, and the Linux distributions are often denied the right to bundle the binary drivers.
Short-sighted users love to point to the nvidia driver and say "see, that one is better than the free driver, why don't we have more of those". The problem is that the nvidia driver is an anomaly. Most binary drivers are crap, on any platform. The most recent experience I had was with a Dlink wireless driver on Windows. It was atrocious! It had different drivers for Windows 98 vs Windows 2000. Neither of them was stable; installing the drivers resulted in crashes on either platform. Both drivers were difficult to configure and had lousy interfaces. In my experience, that is the NORM for binary drivers.
Why would we want that hellish situation on Linux? Linus has taken the correct attitude; make it possible to develop binary device drivers, but don't make it easy. The Linux developers won't bother to debug a kernel linked with binary drivers, they refuse to freeze the ABI, and they make architectural changes whenever it benefits the kernel even if those changes break the binary device drivers.
The kernel developers know that binary drivers will HARM the long-term success of Linux. Listen to them; they know more about this than you do.
Truthfully, your "right" to view SOMEONE ELSE'S movie in the form and fashion you choose has never existed.
Huh? Where did you get that idea from.
Copyright specifially grants the general public certain rights for fair use. Viewing the movie in the form and fashion you prefer is one of those rights. Copyright also limits the copyright holder's rights; they don't have the rights you seem to think they do. Here is a list of rights granted by copyright, the list is from bitlaw.
the right to reproduce the copyrighted work;
the right to prepare derivative works based upon the work;
the right to distribute copies of the work to the public;
the right to perform the copyrighted work publicly; and
the right to display the copyrighted work publicly.
Where in that list does it say that the copyright holder can take away my right to choose the form and fashion with which I view the movie? It says I can't use the copyrighted material in a public display or performance, but there is no restriction on form and fashion at all.
One last thing. You don't own a movie, you own a copy of the movie that you have purchased viewing (and in a small way, copying) PRIVILEGES for.
Sure, I don't own the movie... BUT THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER DOESN'T OWN THE MOVIE EITHER. There is no ownership with copyright; there are only certain rights that the copyright holder can exclusively use for a limited time. When the copyright expires, even those exclusive rights cease to matter. There is no ownership by ANY party. Society has graciously granted a copying and performance monopoly to the movie studios for a limited time, but society NEVER gave the movie studio an ownership of the movie.
At one time most people thought the world was flat, including many scientists.
The Greeks thought that the world was spherical in 350BC and Eratosthenes even calculated the circumference. I'd like to know what this "one time" you mention is supposed to be.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not an American (thank bloody god) so I can say that I'm not affiliated with your "right" or your "left" parties. To the rest of the world they both look right-wing, but I digress.
What is obvious is that your country is overrun with these asshats who insist on turning every single political discussion into "right vs left". It's quite sad. It really devalues any discussion. If I, as a totally unbiassed foreigner, was asked what was harming America most, so we all know that's never going to happen because since when does America care what the rest of the world thinks, I would say it was all of these knee-jerk morons who can't think for themselves but insist on voicing their simplistic "us vs them" politics.
Neither is Windows.
Everything dies... eventually.
I can't speak for the grandparent but I installed mono-1.1.6 by building the source package. Add "deb-src http://manno.name/debian/ hoary main cvs" to your sources.list, apt-get source mono, then dpkg-buildpackage. It builds pretty cleanly.
People are aware of these problems and they are being fixed. Setting up a printer is immeasurably simpler now than it was 5 years ago. Automatically mounting a drive does work properly with recent builds of GNOME (thanks to the Utopia project). I realise that's little consolation to anybody who wants the software now. However it is a sure sign that the problems are not intrinsic; it's just a matter of time until these features work as well on Linux as on other desktops.
If an anecdote would help, I was using Linux back when installing packages involve "mount /dev/fd0H1440 /mnt ; zcat /mnt/X.base.tar.Z | tar xvf -" and configuring X11 involved calculating modelines on a piece of paper. I had to edit the TWM configuration files to add menu entries. The best graphical application was "xfig"; install it and experience the state of the art from only a few years ago. The Linux desktop has progressed an INCREDIBLE distance from those early days.
Why didn't you use Exchange? Evolution can use an Exchange backend server. I don't understand your reasoning that you had to tear out the Linux desktops because of a missing server component.
... aaaannnd DELETE.
You're right, this is a useful feature!
It has nothing to do with "interference" with the electronic systems on the plane. Rather it's a social engineering trick. You see, when you're at 10,000 feet all the mobiles are out of reception range. So any calls or SMS are temporarily diverted to voicemail or messagebank. When the plane lands, suddenly every phone is in reception and all the stored voicemails and SMS flood through to every mobile on the plane. Simultaneously every mobile starts that stupid BEEP BEEP BEEP noise that lets you know about your stored messages. Imagine 700 mobiles all going BEEP BEEP BEEP in unison! It's enough to drive you mad. The flight attendants got pissed off at the noise and cleverly invented this cock and bull story about "interference". Now the mobiles are turned off until you reach the baggage claim area where everybody turns on their mobile phones and annoys the baggage claim attendants instead. You see, the flight attendants have this secret war going on with the hated baggage claim attendants; you and your mobile phones are merely pawns in their devious mind games. Muahahaha.
BSDI, SunOS, 386BSD, dozens of others. Though I'm guessing you're only counting BSD offspring that are still "alive".
I think that has more to do with the relative sizes of the communities. Linux has significantly greater numbers of users and developers. I think projects would fork sooner if software was easier to write. However software isnt easy to write so forks occur at a rate in proportion to the number of highly skilled developers. I saw this also with XFree86/Xorg. It wasn't that forks weren't desired long before the Xorg split but rather that there were very few developers with sufficient talent to sustain a fork. Fortunately the leads on the Xorg split are two of the best X developers that ever existed.
I also see it as good for survival. History is littered with the corpses of software that chose the wrong path at the wrong time. The flexibility of Linux means that it exists in every niche at once. If one niche dries up, Linux will continue to thrive in any of the other 100s of niches.
Uhh, my anti-apple bias? You're kidding, right? I'm typing this from a PowerBook and this is my fifth Apple computer in the past decade. I love Apple Computers. Steve Wozniak is the Geek God. Steve Jobs is inspirational. The Apple II was so great it made men weep with joy. Macs are great, that's why I keep buying them. I'm personally responsible for several PC -> Mac conversions; people ask me which computer to buy and I tell them "a Mac".
Now, Apple fanboys, that's something I really hate. This thread has been the perfect example of everything I hate about you guys. I point out how useless these "Minor Upgrade to Existing Apple Software" stories are, and I get accusations that I'm "anti-apple". Remove your fanboy chips from those lumps of meat you laughably call your brains, because they're affecting your ability to think.
The article? You mean the product announcement on the Apple website. Yes, I did read it.
Riiiight, so are you saying that this software isn't proprietary?
I've learnt that Apple fanatics have blinkers the size of solar sails.
It's bad practise for the IT staff to conduct their own pen-testing and their own security audits. Hiring an independent consultant to audit the environment is sensible, not clueless.
It's up to the IT staff to tell the boss if they got good value for money. Blaming the boss for not knowing about technical stuff is plain unprofessional. It's your job to keep the boss informed.
They've done nothing wrong. It's their job to point out every molehill. It's your job to perform a threat/risk assessment for each molehill and present a range of mitigations to your boss. For example:
This honestly isn't rocket science. The consultick isn't out to destroy you. He's just doing his job. And yes, it's amusing that the consulticks charge huge amounts of money to run nmap and Nessus, but they were only brought in because you obviously don't have the time to do it yourself.
I get the impression that you've taken this as a personal slight. I think that you believe the consultick's report has made you look bad. Get over it. Maybe you have made a mistake. Maybe you haven't. Your boss doesn't know yet because he isn't informed. Informing your boss of the risks and the costs raised by the consultick's report should be your #1 priority. If you do a good job, you and the consultick will both look good.
It wasn't important to Windows 3.1 users.
Hell, it still isn't important to Windows XP users.
If people cared about something that "works right out of the box" or a "consistent look and feel" then Windows wouldn't be a significant player at all.
People care about *price* first and *effort* second. Some people will crawl through mud to save a nickel. We call those people "the majority".
Any idiot who thinks Windows works "right out of the box" has obviously never tried to use Windows "right out of the box". It's a disaster of epic proportions. Drivers and viruses and stupid configuration dialogs you need a masters degree[1] to decipher. The unpaid labour that any tech geek bestows on his family and friends, supporting and fixing their effing bleeding blinding crappy Windows boxes, is the only reason that Windows is used at all by the general population.
And consistency? What the hell is consistent about the Windows interface? WMP9 looks nothing like Notepad looks nothing like Office XP looks nothing like Symantec anything looks nothing like Adobe anything. They're all freaking different. Even worse are these new schizoid applications that think they're the offspring of Shockwave and an acid trip. They look nothing like ANY version of Windows that has ever existed.
So don't give me that shit about "consistent look and feel" or "works right out of the box". I laugh at the mere suggestion.
/grumble
[1] in Dumbfuckingdialogology
Why is that so hard to believe? I have 34GB of entirely legit content. Admittedly I rip at 192kbps and it's taken 10 years to build my CD collection, but I don't think it's an unusually large collection.
Because you can't afford the uncrippled version?
Seriously, if you need Windows for whatever reasons, and you can't afford to buy the uncrippled version, and you're adverse to the illegal and arguably immoral copying of software that belongs to Microsoft, then the crippled version is the next best thing.
No, he really didn't.
Or even better...
Of course, Christians like to repeat the lie that Einstein believed in their particular god. You're not one of those lying Christians, are you?
,,Oh+God@I_hope_he,,doesnt+use++arch.
=I,couldn't++bear=the=pain.
What is it with you Americans and this dogged obsession with "companies only exist to make money"?
Making money isn't the sole point of a company. Companies exist to fulfil their owners objectives as expressed by the mission statement. A side product of fulfilling those objectives is to make money, because an unprofitable company won't fulfil the objectives for very long.
Money is a means to an end, not the end in and of itself. Companies exist to make cars, build furniture, produce electricity, sell food, provide services, and literally 1000s of other purposes. Making money is part of that process, but it is not the actual objective.
When CEOs forget the company's objectives and pursue making money, that's when a company fails. Witness what's happening to HP; Carly tried to make more profit at the expense of the companies objectives. Thanks to her, HP might as well be dead. All the brilliance that once embodied "all things HP" has vanished. They are now a hollow shell of their former selves; little more than an expensive kind of Dell. Companies that focus on their objectives make money without even trying; look at Google.
For an even better example, look at Apple. In the mid-90s, during the absence of Steve, Apple lost sight of their objective; building the best personal computers. They started to produce some godawful crap like the PowerMac 4400. They wanted to make more money by producing a "cheap Mac" and selling to a larger audience. Combined with a whole lot of other boneheaded schemes to "make money quick", Apple almost went bankrupt. That's because the guys in charge never understood what Apple was all about.
Steve comes back and reinstates his vision of producing the best personal computers. Bam, Apple is back in the black and the industry darling again. Is Steve a brainiac? No. Is he just lucky? No. He simply knows to focus on the company's core objectives and that's why Steve's companies always succeed. Whether he's at Pixar or Apple, he pursues the objectives first, knowing full well that the money will come after.
Stop pursuing the money. Counterintuitively that's not how you make money! Make a great product, or provide a great service, and money will come naturally. That's how great companies and great people manage to succeed.
Linus doesn't have any legal training and/or qualifications so his opinion isn't gospel. In any event you haven't understood what he actually said.
Linus said that kernel drivers which are not derivative works don't fall under the GPL. However drivers that are derivative works do fall under the GPL. He gave two examples. One was the nvidia driver, where clearly the majority of the code was developed independently. He was OK with that driver. His other example was a driver that exposed kernel internals using a GPL'd patch and used those internals in the binary driver. That driver was a derivative work of the kernel, so he put his foot down.
Then go use Windows, damnit.
Linux is stable because of the paucity of binary device drivers. Binary drivers are hard to debug, they have undocumented behaviour, they tie the user into a specific platform and version of the kernel, they make it harder for the kernel developers to fix architectural flaws with Linux without breaking all the drivers, and the Linux distributions are often denied the right to bundle the binary drivers.
Short-sighted users love to point to the nvidia driver and say "see, that one is better than the free driver, why don't we have more of those". The problem is that the nvidia driver is an anomaly. Most binary drivers are crap, on any platform. The most recent experience I had was with a Dlink wireless driver on Windows. It was atrocious! It had different drivers for Windows 98 vs Windows 2000. Neither of them was stable; installing the drivers resulted in crashes on either platform. Both drivers were difficult to configure and had lousy interfaces. In my experience, that is the NORM for binary drivers.
Why would we want that hellish situation on Linux? Linus has taken the correct attitude; make it possible to develop binary device drivers, but don't make it easy. The Linux developers won't bother to debug a kernel linked with binary drivers, they refuse to freeze the ABI, and they make architectural changes whenever it benefits the kernel even if those changes break the binary device drivers.
The kernel developers know that binary drivers will HARM the long-term success of Linux. Listen to them; they know more about this than you do.
500mA at 5V, so 2.5W. But you're right; that's woefully insufficient for charging.
Subversion is entirely inappropriate. Linus prefers the distributed revision control tools. Subversion uses a centralised repository.
Monotone, arch and svk are all options. My money's on monotone.
Huh? Where did you get that idea from.
Copyright specifially grants the general public certain rights for fair use. Viewing the movie in the form and fashion you prefer is one of those rights. Copyright also limits the copyright holder's rights; they don't have the rights you seem to think they do. Here is a list of rights granted by copyright, the list is from bitlaw.
Where in that list does it say that the copyright holder can take away my right to choose the form and fashion with which I view the movie? It says I can't use the copyrighted material in a public display or performance, but there is no restriction on form and fashion at all.
Sure, I don't own the movie... BUT THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER DOESN'T OWN THE MOVIE EITHER. There is no ownership with copyright; there are only certain rights that the copyright holder can exclusively use for a limited time. When the copyright expires, even those exclusive rights cease to matter. There is no ownership by ANY party. Society has graciously granted a copying and performance monopoly to the movie studios for a limited time, but society NEVER gave the movie studio an ownership of the movie.
You need to tell me what you think is wrong with it.
The Greeks thought that the world was spherical in 350BC and Eratosthenes even calculated the circumference. I'd like to know what this "one time" you mention is supposed to be.