Personally I convert to lossless for my own personal collection, and transcode when sending off to friends. If I had a portable music player I'd transcode for that also. However, it's far more convenient to keep lossless versions on my hard drive than have to dig out and re-rip three hundred CDs every time I want the music in another format.
(Yes, it takes time, but generally that's just "copy all the.flacs somewhere and then start a script to bulk-convert, come back in a day.")
So, does this mean that it's impossible to leave the country unless you first give over all your personal data? Even if you want to leave solely because you don't want to give that data?
I wonder if and when the first people will start running smuggling operations out of Britain.
For a company the size of Microsoft that's not even a significant amount of data.
Take all of those pieces of data. Assume it takes, oh, one kilobyte. (You might argue this, but things like "computer make and model" can be realistically compressed down to a mere half-dozen bytes with just a simple lookup table. None of the rest is any larger.) Times one billion computers equals one terabyte. Times 150 critical updates, assuming you can't compress the fuck out of this data, equals 150 terabytes.
150 terabytes, at current hard drive prices, is well under a hundred thousand dollars of hard drives. And that data is *not* doing to take 150 terabytes. That data is going to be compressed in many, many ways.
What kind of server they put it on likely depends on how they plan to read it. A database might have trouble with it, but writing software that allows you to simply traverse the data and process it in bulk (go find info on Google's MapReduce for an example of this) really isn't all that difficult.
If the US economy collapses I don't care how evacuated the immediate area is, there will be thousands upon thousands of deaths.
Plus, how exactly would you go about evacuating "huge areas of the US"? Even assuming you could find everyone (you couldn't) the amount of rioting and damage that would occur would be extraordinary.
I'm perfectly prepared to believe that the first segment is exaggerated for the sake of journalism. But if the first part is in any way accurate, the second part is extremely minimized.
From the linked article: Scientists have very few answers, but they do know that the impact of a Yellowstone eruption is terrifying to comprehend. Huge areas of the USA would be destroyed, the US economy would probably collapse, and thousands might die.
Thousands . . . might? In that situation I'd say "hundreds of thousands will" is far, far more likely.
They're either hilariously overexaggerating the first part or hilariously underexaggerating the second.
That's true, but I find this to be an actual disadvantage. I think it's partly the visual memory thing - I like having the menus be part of the *window* because then it's easier for me to remember "the application" in one unit, not "the window and then the rest of the app".
(One reason the whole "floating toolbar" thing that The Gimp does bugs me.)
I don't know how important that is from a usability standpoint - obviously there's a simple and reasonably obvious usability benefit to it, again, but I don't know how major it is. It'd be tough to try measuring the advantages vs. disadvantages in any kind of useful absolute way.
You're missing my point. I acknowledge that selecting the menu bar in the first place is easier. However:
* How much does that actually contribute to the average amount of time spent dealing with menus? * How often are menus something that the user spends a significant amount of time dealing with?
In my case, the answers are "not much" and "extremely rarely", making the overall optimization near-useless. And, in my opinion, not worth the visual irritation.
Yes, Fitt's Law says that it's faster. That I do not argue. I simply claim that the thing it makes faster is not particularly worth making faster, especially with the way it's being done.
I finally figured out the reason I never liked that argument.
Yes, selecting the menu bar is easier on a Mac. That I can't argue at all. But selecting the individual menu items is still just as difficult, which you're doing at least once anyway - you gain, at most, 50% speed, assuming that selecting the menu bar is instant (which it isn't.) And if you're going through cascading menus, or searching menus for options, that gain decreases to zero very quickly.
Personally I very rarely use menus for anything - ctrl-s to save, ctrl-f to find, and once in a while I go and choose the "replace" option. But on Windows, the menu is part of the window and is less visually distracting when I change windows (since all the redrawing is localized to one square chunk), whereas on OSX I feel like part of the system interface is changing whenever I swap applications. It's more context that I have to keep track of.
Of course, some of that is doubtless just due to the fact that I'm used to Windows. But the whole "infinite size menu bar == good" thing seems like a bit of a red herring - how much does it honestly generally matter?
Hell, I just noticed for the first time that I forgot to turn menu fading off when I installed this OS a year ago. You can see how often I use menus.
Considering that "power management" is in there, I suspect he means "how much I have to fight with the interface and configuration to make this stuff work", not "how long does it take to run in the background".
* Guaranteed availability of games on launch day (I believe they already do this; I don't think Wal-Mart bothers.)
Ahahahahah. That's funny.
I think the last four or five times I went to hunt out a game on release day every single EBGamestop in the area was sold out. In each case I ended up finding it in Best Buy or CompUSA. "Did you pre-order?" "No." "Well, then we don't have any." Fuck you too, EBGamestop.
This happened with Ratchet: Deadlocked, Shadow of the Colossus, and Civ4. I can't remember others offhand but I know there have been some.
The fundamental issue is that new games don't make retailers money. The distributors sell them to retailers for only a few dollars below retail price, and the retailer is stuck trying to make money off game placement, used games, service contracts, magazine subscriptions, or hint books. (Ever wondered why they push those so hard? It's because they make six times the profit on a single item sale.) It's a horrible problem with game retail right now and really desperately needs to be addressed.
I agree that having to unlock games is s a flaw of Rayman, but it only takes a few hours and you could always do it with friends:)
And true, Rayman's got issues with a lack of four-player simultaneous games. But some of Monkey Ball's aren't simultaneous either, and a lot of them just plain aren't fun. I have to admit I haven't played Rayman much with four players - generally two players only - so I'm not sure what the ratio is there.
Both of them have unfortunate problems really, but I feel Rayman's games are generally better, and in the situations I've been playing it I find the game itself generally more fun. I don't find either of them spectacular, unfortunately.
I recommend trying Rayman: Raving Rabbids. Most people (myself included) find the minigames generally more fun and more creative than the Monkey Ball minigames. I think that's why I never hear Monkey Ball mentioned - all of my friends that have played both talk about Rayman instead of Monkey Ball.
States can have laws that ratchet freedom further, but they can't decrease your rights any more than the federal government Constitutionally is able to.
Of course, the Federal Government is able to do exactly that, as long as there's children, terrorism, or drugs involved.
Seriously - take a look at our Constitution someday and figure out how many of those amendments are actually paid attention to. Out of the first ten Amendments I count five that are unambiguously violated (2, 4, 5, 6, 8) and four that are arguably violated (1, 7, 9, 10). The only one that I really can't argue about is 3. And that's just in the first ten.
Right now, our government has no problem whatsoever with decreasing our rights.
How many people need computers? How many people need the Internet? How many people need steak, or books, or action movies?
How many people need spring mattresses?
Sorry dude, but as long as I find driving and paying for gas overall more convenient than not doing so, I'm going to be driving. All over the place. 250 miles a week or more. (Just today was about 100 miles, in fact.) And I imagine the vast, vast majority of the world will be doing the same - not because they hate the environment, or they want to rely on the oil conglomerates, but simply because gas is really, really cheap compared to the unbelievable amount of time that public transportation wastes, or the practical inability to get to further-away higher-quality stores. Maybe you can, but possibly you're in an urban center (I'm not) or perhaps you don't value your time very highly (I do) or perhaps you simply don't have esoteric desires that involve traveling large distances (I do). Not everyone does or should have your particular set of needs and costs.
Meanwhile, though, let me know when you get rid of your computer - it required an incredible amount of energy to build (oil), probably has a significant plastic component (oil), and takes significant amounts of power just to run (oil).
I'll take it off your hands if you want. Consider it a favor.
This is pretty much what I feel, yes:) I'm still a relative newbie, but I've helped blow up hundreds of dollars worth of incredibly expensive ships, in my brand new frigate worth . . . about five cents. Consequences are fun.
The interesting parts of the game aren't busywork (like production, which just happens in the background, or PvP), but mining and killing pirates are really rather repetitive. I do those in small quantities when talking on the phone:P I wish they were more interesting or scriptable in some way.
It's a great game overall, but it's a bitch of a game and you absolutely need a good corporation (basically a group.) Not perfect, in the end.
Actually, the problem wasn't that the ceiling tiles were glued to the ceiling. The problem was that they were glued badly. The concept was perfectly safe and reasonable, and is a commonly-used construction technique. They just fucked it up.
There were huge criminial-negligence-caliber mistakes made. But the simple fact that they decided to glue ceiling tiles to the ceiling wasn't one of them.
First, find a research agent in a corp you like. You can find lists of research agents, as well as what BPOs you're likely to get out of them, in various places (the one I use is locked behind a corporate login, but I'm sure they exist. This is data available freely, too - you could just download the Eve database packs and read it out of there yourself.) High-level agents are far better. Ideally, you want to find four or five L4 Q10-20 agents, all of which specialize in research types that you're interested in.
Next, grind faction with that corp. I recommend kill missions. You'll need to get your corp standing up to around 5, as I remember, and your corp/faction standing up to around 7. (These can be the same standing, of course.)
Meanwhile, you'll need to train the research skill you want. These invariably require Research V and some other tier 1 skill at V. Gallentean Starship Engineering, for example, also requires Mechanic V, while Laser Physics requires Engineering V. You'll probably want to train these skills up to 3 or 4, since they govern how many research points you get. On top of this you probably want Research Project Management at 3 or 4, which will also require Laboratory Operation V. So you're looking at maybe a month or two of training. The skills aren't trivial.
Once you've done all this, you can talk to a research agent (or 4 or 5, or even 6 if you took research project management to V for some reason) and tell them to start researching. From here, your job is essentially done. You'll get RP every day at a constant rate. There are daily "research missions" you can do - they're always courier missions - to double the RP you get that day. But there's no penalty for ignoring them, beyond not getting the RP.
If you're lucky enough to be picked in a BPO auction, the agent will send you a mail and hold the blueprint for a time period (I think it's two weeks.) You'll also lose all your RP on that agent - not that you'll care. Grab the BPO and profit . . . and remember to restart research with that agent, since it stops after you get a BPO. And if there's anything better than a T2 BPO, it's got to be two T2 BPOs.
Now you know everything about research.
Personally, I hate the idea of bind-on-equip and bind-on-pickup. I like how economic Eve is. There's undercutters, resellers, even price control cartels (ever wondered why Improved Cloaking Devices have been so expensive? All the BPO owners are in a cartel. Price seems to be dropping now though, I wonder if the cartel was broken.) Eve is a bitch of a game, but it's supposed to be, and that's why a lot of us play it.
There's nothing else in the world where you can destroy $4000 of someone else's property without their permission and then brag about it without having to worry about cops.
There is. It's called SDL and OpenGL. Everything else is game-specific.
Of course, some families of games are closer than other - you could probably make one engine for all first-person shooters, one engine for all MMORPGs, etc. But if you want one engine for everything, we're already as close as we're going to get.
In my experience, the population voting outside 65 or 70% is moderately rare, with 90% or more being pretty much unheard of. A lot of propositions pass or fail based on just a few percentage points.
No, it's not MS's job at all to support a filesystem which is used by a miniscule fraction of their userbase. They're under no requirement whatsoever to do so.
It is their job to provide drivers for filesystems commonly used by users of their OS, and they do - they've got the world's best support for NTFS. Honestly, the number of times I've wanted ext3 support on Windows can be counted on the thumbs of one hand, and I'm a geek with a home network of half a dozen systems (a dozen if you count VMs.)
It's honestly not worth their time and I can't blame them in the least.
You will start getting questions like "why cannot my Windows see my Linux partition?" Well, gosh, because Windows is designed to be incompatible?
What on earth are you talking about?
There's a lot to complain about in Windows, I can't argue that. But claiming that Windows was designed to be incompatible because it can't natively read a file system that 99.999% of Windows users don't even know exists, and the vast majority of the remainder don't care about, is absolute garbage. I'd agree with you if it wasn't possible to write filesystem drivers for Windows, but oh hey, it is.
It's not Microsoft's job to provide file system drivers for every filesystem on the planet, nor should it be. It is their job to provide interfaces so that new filesystems can be plugged in if anyone feels like writing them, and in this particular case, they have.
I don't like MS either, and I agree that they frequently attempt lockin and frequently design their systems to be as hard to interface with as possible. But pointing to filesystems as an example of that is simply flawed. Please, campaign for Linux using facts, not baseless wild accusations.
I never said it wouldn't essentially be a parliament or a congress. Yes, it would be a group of people more politically powerful than the average person. I mean we already have those in most places.
It'd just be one of those, with an added popular-vote-override option.
And yes, they would be able to, since if they voted 90% to raise taxes and the population only voted 60%, it would be passed. It's essentially a way of saying "no, seriously, we know best, really", while still allowing the population to override them.
'Course it doesn't deal with all the standard issues with the right people getting elected, the "congress" voting to further their own agendas, etc, but it might still be a bit better than what we currently have.
Slashdot Mirror
I plan to eventually buy a PS3 for the new Ratchet and Clank game, assuming it's good, as well as for Flow.
But you're right, I'd also buy one for Final Fantasy.
And Gran Turismo is going into micropayment hell, so that's not a guaranteed win there, actually. I guess we'll see.
Personally I convert to lossless for my own personal collection, and transcode when sending off to friends. If I had a portable music player I'd transcode for that also. However, it's far more convenient to keep lossless versions on my hard drive than have to dig out and re-rip three hundred CDs every time I want the music in another format.
.flacs somewhere and then start a script to bulk-convert, come back in a day.")
(Yes, it takes time, but generally that's just "copy all the
Geez dude. Way to lose all credibility on your previous points.
So, does this mean that it's impossible to leave the country unless you first give over all your personal data? Even if you want to leave solely because you don't want to give that data?
I wonder if and when the first people will start running smuggling operations out of Britain.
For a company the size of Microsoft that's not even a significant amount of data.
Take all of those pieces of data. Assume it takes, oh, one kilobyte. (You might argue this, but things like "computer make and model" can be realistically compressed down to a mere half-dozen bytes with just a simple lookup table. None of the rest is any larger.) Times one billion computers equals one terabyte. Times 150 critical updates, assuming you can't compress the fuck out of this data, equals 150 terabytes.
150 terabytes, at current hard drive prices, is well under a hundred thousand dollars of hard drives. And that data is *not* doing to take 150 terabytes. That data is going to be compressed in many, many ways.
What kind of server they put it on likely depends on how they plan to read it. A database might have trouble with it, but writing software that allows you to simply traverse the data and process it in bulk (go find info on Google's MapReduce for an example of this) really isn't all that difficult.
If the US economy collapses I don't care how evacuated the immediate area is, there will be thousands upon thousands of deaths.
Plus, how exactly would you go about evacuating "huge areas of the US"? Even assuming you could find everyone (you couldn't) the amount of rioting and damage that would occur would be extraordinary.
I'm perfectly prepared to believe that the first segment is exaggerated for the sake of journalism. But if the first part is in any way accurate, the second part is extremely minimized.
From the linked article:
Scientists have very few answers, but they do know that the impact of a Yellowstone eruption is terrifying to comprehend. Huge areas of the USA would be destroyed, the US economy would probably collapse, and thousands might die.
Thousands . . . might? In that situation I'd say "hundreds of thousands will" is far, far more likely.
They're either hilariously overexaggerating the first part or hilariously underexaggerating the second.
That's true, but I find this to be an actual disadvantage. I think it's partly the visual memory thing - I like having the menus be part of the *window* because then it's easier for me to remember "the application" in one unit, not "the window and then the rest of the app".
(One reason the whole "floating toolbar" thing that The Gimp does bugs me.)
I don't know how important that is from a usability standpoint - obviously there's a simple and reasonably obvious usability benefit to it, again, but I don't know how major it is. It'd be tough to try measuring the advantages vs. disadvantages in any kind of useful absolute way.
You're missing my point. I acknowledge that selecting the menu bar in the first place is easier. However:
* How much does that actually contribute to the average amount of time spent dealing with menus?
* How often are menus something that the user spends a significant amount of time dealing with?
In my case, the answers are "not much" and "extremely rarely", making the overall optimization near-useless. And, in my opinion, not worth the visual irritation.
Yes, Fitt's Law says that it's faster. That I do not argue. I simply claim that the thing it makes faster is not particularly worth making faster, especially with the way it's being done.
I finally figured out the reason I never liked that argument.
Yes, selecting the menu bar is easier on a Mac. That I can't argue at all. But selecting the individual menu items is still just as difficult, which you're doing at least once anyway - you gain, at most, 50% speed, assuming that selecting the menu bar is instant (which it isn't.) And if you're going through cascading menus, or searching menus for options, that gain decreases to zero very quickly.
Personally I very rarely use menus for anything - ctrl-s to save, ctrl-f to find, and once in a while I go and choose the "replace" option. But on Windows, the menu is part of the window and is less visually distracting when I change windows (since all the redrawing is localized to one square chunk), whereas on OSX I feel like part of the system interface is changing whenever I swap applications. It's more context that I have to keep track of.
Of course, some of that is doubtless just due to the fact that I'm used to Windows. But the whole "infinite size menu bar == good" thing seems like a bit of a red herring - how much does it honestly generally matter?
Hell, I just noticed for the first time that I forgot to turn menu fading off when I installed this OS a year ago. You can see how often I use menus.
Considering that "power management" is in there, I suspect he means "how much I have to fight with the interface and configuration to make this stuff work", not "how long does it take to run in the background".
* Guaranteed availability of games on launch day (I believe they already do this; I don't think Wal-Mart bothers.)
Ahahahahah. That's funny.
I think the last four or five times I went to hunt out a game on release day every single EBGamestop in the area was sold out. In each case I ended up finding it in Best Buy or CompUSA. "Did you pre-order?" "No." "Well, then we don't have any." Fuck you too, EBGamestop.
This happened with Ratchet: Deadlocked, Shadow of the Colossus, and Civ4. I can't remember others offhand but I know there have been some.
The fundamental issue is that new games don't make retailers money. The distributors sell them to retailers for only a few dollars below retail price, and the retailer is stuck trying to make money off game placement, used games, service contracts, magazine subscriptions, or hint books. (Ever wondered why they push those so hard? It's because they make six times the profit on a single item sale.) It's a horrible problem with game retail right now and really desperately needs to be addressed.
I agree that having to unlock games is s a flaw of Rayman, but it only takes a few hours and you could always do it with friends :)
:)
And true, Rayman's got issues with a lack of four-player simultaneous games. But some of Monkey Ball's aren't simultaneous either, and a lot of them just plain aren't fun. I have to admit I haven't played Rayman much with four players - generally two players only - so I'm not sure what the ratio is there.
Both of them have unfortunate problems really, but I feel Rayman's games are generally better, and in the situations I've been playing it I find the game itself generally more fun. I don't find either of them spectacular, unfortunately.
Maybe WarioWare is better.
I recommend trying Rayman: Raving Rabbids. Most people (myself included) find the minigames generally more fun and more creative than the Monkey Ball minigames. I think that's why I never hear Monkey Ball mentioned - all of my friends that have played both talk about Rayman instead of Monkey Ball.
You've come up with possibly the worst example imaginable.
Kudos.
Of course, the Federal Government is able to do exactly that, as long as there's children, terrorism, or drugs involved.
Seriously - take a look at our Constitution someday and figure out how many of those amendments are actually paid attention to. Out of the first ten Amendments I count five that are unambiguously violated (2, 4, 5, 6, 8) and four that are arguably violated (1, 7, 9, 10). The only one that I really can't argue about is 3. And that's just in the first ten.
Right now, our government has no problem whatsoever with decreasing our rights.
How many people need large TVs?
How many people need computers? How many people need the Internet? How many people need steak, or books, or action movies?
How many people need spring mattresses?
Sorry dude, but as long as I find driving and paying for gas overall more convenient than not doing so, I'm going to be driving. All over the place. 250 miles a week or more. (Just today was about 100 miles, in fact.) And I imagine the vast, vast majority of the world will be doing the same - not because they hate the environment, or they want to rely on the oil conglomerates, but simply because gas is really, really cheap compared to the unbelievable amount of time that public transportation wastes, or the practical inability to get to further-away higher-quality stores. Maybe you can, but possibly you're in an urban center (I'm not) or perhaps you don't value your time very highly (I do) or perhaps you simply don't have esoteric desires that involve traveling large distances (I do). Not everyone does or should have your particular set of needs and costs.
Meanwhile, though, let me know when you get rid of your computer - it required an incredible amount of energy to build (oil), probably has a significant plastic component (oil), and takes significant amounts of power just to run (oil).
I'll take it off your hands if you want. Consider it a favor.
This is pretty much what I feel, yes :) I'm still a relative newbie, but I've helped blow up hundreds of dollars worth of incredibly expensive ships, in my brand new frigate worth . . . about five cents. Consequences are fun.
:P I wish they were more interesting or scriptable in some way.
The interesting parts of the game aren't busywork (like production, which just happens in the background, or PvP), but mining and killing pirates are really rather repetitive. I do those in small quantities when talking on the phone
It's a great game overall, but it's a bitch of a game and you absolutely need a good corporation (basically a group.) Not perfect, in the end.
Actually, the problem wasn't that the ceiling tiles were glued to the ceiling. The problem was that they were glued badly. The concept was perfectly safe and reasonable, and is a commonly-used construction technique. They just fucked it up.
There were huge criminial-negligence-caliber mistakes made. But the simple fact that they decided to glue ceiling tiles to the ceiling wasn't one of them.
If you're curious:
First, find a research agent in a corp you like. You can find lists of research agents, as well as what BPOs you're likely to get out of them, in various places (the one I use is locked behind a corporate login, but I'm sure they exist. This is data available freely, too - you could just download the Eve database packs and read it out of there yourself.) High-level agents are far better. Ideally, you want to find four or five L4 Q10-20 agents, all of which specialize in research types that you're interested in.
Next, grind faction with that corp. I recommend kill missions. You'll need to get your corp standing up to around 5, as I remember, and your corp/faction standing up to around 7. (These can be the same standing, of course.)
Meanwhile, you'll need to train the research skill you want. These invariably require Research V and some other tier 1 skill at V. Gallentean Starship Engineering, for example, also requires Mechanic V, while Laser Physics requires Engineering V. You'll probably want to train these skills up to 3 or 4, since they govern how many research points you get. On top of this you probably want Research Project Management at 3 or 4, which will also require Laboratory Operation V. So you're looking at maybe a month or two of training. The skills aren't trivial.
Once you've done all this, you can talk to a research agent (or 4 or 5, or even 6 if you took research project management to V for some reason) and tell them to start researching. From here, your job is essentially done. You'll get RP every day at a constant rate. There are daily "research missions" you can do - they're always courier missions - to double the RP you get that day. But there's no penalty for ignoring them, beyond not getting the RP.
If you're lucky enough to be picked in a BPO auction, the agent will send you a mail and hold the blueprint for a time period (I think it's two weeks.) You'll also lose all your RP on that agent - not that you'll care. Grab the BPO and profit . . . and remember to restart research with that agent, since it stops after you get a BPO. And if there's anything better than a T2 BPO, it's got to be two T2 BPOs.
Now you know everything about research.
Personally, I hate the idea of bind-on-equip and bind-on-pickup. I like how economic Eve is. There's undercutters, resellers, even price control cartels (ever wondered why Improved Cloaking Devices have been so expensive? All the BPO owners are in a cartel. Price seems to be dropping now though, I wonder if the cartel was broken.) Eve is a bitch of a game, but it's supposed to be, and that's why a lot of us play it.
There's nothing else in the world where you can destroy $4000 of someone else's property without their permission and then brag about it without having to worry about cops.
There is. It's called SDL and OpenGL. Everything else is game-specific.
Of course, some families of games are closer than other - you could probably make one engine for all first-person shooters, one engine for all MMORPGs, etc. But if you want one engine for everything, we're already as close as we're going to get.
In my experience, the population voting outside 65 or 70% is moderately rare, with 90% or more being pretty much unheard of. A lot of propositions pass or fail based on just a few percentage points.
No, it's not MS's job at all to support a filesystem which is used by a miniscule fraction of their userbase. They're under no requirement whatsoever to do so.
It is their job to provide drivers for filesystems commonly used by users of their OS, and they do - they've got the world's best support for NTFS. Honestly, the number of times I've wanted ext3 support on Windows can be counted on the thumbs of one hand, and I'm a geek with a home network of half a dozen systems (a dozen if you count VMs.)
It's honestly not worth their time and I can't blame them in the least.
You will start getting questions like "why cannot my Windows see my Linux partition?" Well, gosh, because Windows is designed to be incompatible?
What on earth are you talking about?
There's a lot to complain about in Windows, I can't argue that. But claiming that Windows was designed to be incompatible because it can't natively read a file system that 99.999% of Windows users don't even know exists, and the vast majority of the remainder don't care about, is absolute garbage. I'd agree with you if it wasn't possible to write filesystem drivers for Windows, but oh hey, it is.
It's not Microsoft's job to provide file system drivers for every filesystem on the planet, nor should it be. It is their job to provide interfaces so that new filesystems can be plugged in if anyone feels like writing them, and in this particular case, they have.
I don't like MS either, and I agree that they frequently attempt lockin and frequently design their systems to be as hard to interface with as possible. But pointing to filesystems as an example of that is simply flawed. Please, campaign for Linux using facts, not baseless wild accusations.
I never said it wouldn't essentially be a parliament or a congress. Yes, it would be a group of people more politically powerful than the average person. I mean we already have those in most places.
It'd just be one of those, with an added popular-vote-override option.
And yes, they would be able to, since if they voted 90% to raise taxes and the population only voted 60%, it would be passed. It's essentially a way of saying "no, seriously, we know best, really", while still allowing the population to override them.
'Course it doesn't deal with all the standard issues with the right people getting elected, the "congress" voting to further their own agendas, etc, but it might still be a bit better than what we currently have.