Not only is there no method of inspecting the "mechanics" or logic (one transistor or bit out of billions could throw an election) of these Black Box Voting machines, but the prospects of forensic investigation are extremely poor.
It is hard enough maintaining security/integrity in computerized transactions these days even when the identity of both parties is known and a statement/receipt is generated. But where the user is necessarily anonymous, accountability with computers goes out the window.
Computerized "ballots" (those not submitted as physical objects) can't truly exist and must be banned.
...you can choose your news & entertainment on the Internet with the cap hovering over you. Or you can be rewarded with 'extra' access to the Internet for the same price - as long as you allow Comcast to force feed their preferred "news" and entertainment to you.
People who accept the force-feeding get more service.
The point is that the certificate authorities FAIL to provide that assurance and further represent a burden that this technology now alleviates. With this technology that assurance is provided without the need for the biased and profit motivated certificate authorities.
You miss the point of web certificates. They do not verify a person or corporation's existence (a silly goal), they verify an address.
I don't want web certs to certify birth certificates, corporate charters, or how nice/bad some authority thinks the site operators are.
I need to know the 'rentalgeek.com' my computer is currently talking with is the same site that got registered by whoever the rightful owners are. THAT is the only identity which can be readily verified start-to-finish over the Internet. I need to know the address hasn't been hijacked by a group that didn't register the domain.
Now whether 'ba.com' belongs to Bank Of America or the Boomerang Association or Ben Affleck is entirely up to me, the user, to determine through inputs I receive from web searches, yellow pages, snailmail correspondence, billboards, and links on sites that I reasonably trust. THERE IS NO WAY AROUND THIS.
Why should someone jump in just to create a list for something they may not understand? Plenty of others from the outside have failed at making a Linux HCL.
People who need such a list in the first place are not likely to be able to compile a good one.
Someone already in the position of coordinating additions and updates to the kernel should create and update a hardware compatibility list. It should be a very simple task for a Linux Torvalds or an Alan Cox.
Then, someone else can take that information and turn it into a search page that your average PC buyer can understand and use.
Do you expect hardware that's made for a Mac to run in a PC?
Actually I expect hardware that's made for a Mac/PC to be clearly indicated as such somewhere. However the Linux Foundation doesn't promote identifying Linux compatibility on the hardware packaging the way MS and Apple do with their respective OSes.
You might say that is so because most of the work for drivers is undertaken by kernel hackers themselves. But said hackers only list the compatible CPUs for the kernel... they do not make any single compatibility reference (HCL) for other devices.
This makes me think that the kernel hackers are really only interested in catering to others like themselves, who don't mind keeping tabs on the kernel mailing list. Their expectations of end-users patience and abilities is entirely unrealistic.
You say it doesn't concern the Fourth Amendment because the courts define "reasonable expectation of privacy" in a deranged manner with respect to new technology they treat like magic.
You are trying to make your point myopically, from the standpoint of your socio-economic class. Together with the political class (by which I also mean "industry" lobbyists) "you" have locked up over 17% of the current adult population with over 1% presently in the slammer. You openly use the tactics and dialectic of civil war on an increasing number of issues, lately the "war on terror", such that many urban neighborhoods are effectively Constitution-free zones. And you increasingly prey on the most helpless/hapless members of society, the easy targets, while viewing bigger criminals as necessary evils to advance one's power base.
I suppose I could lobby to correct problems from the legislative side. But buying-off politicians is standard practice with our "system" of government, and there are far richer lobbyists acting to expand the lucrative police-state industry. Coming from the other end, the "Fourth Estate" is now nothing but a cartel of conglomerate mouthpieces for whom any candidate standing apart from their tradition of increasingly concentrated wealth must be vilified or ridiculed. Even the more 'independent' entities with a broadcast TV presence have pretty much the same major shareholders as the other networks, defense and homeland security contractors, power companies, mercenary armies, etc. The real watchdogs are left to chirp from blogs, for crisesake.
And frankly, I don't see why I have to address the issue.
Because you don't see that you and I and a cop are all civilians supposedly subject to the same laws. It is assumed that cops work professionally with the courts. But if warrants are no longer required to track or cyber-stalk someone, then there needs to be a proper explanation (which I doubt exists) that places this activity within the context of a "free" society. Otherwise, the conclusion people will increasingly make is that the USA has become a repressive police state, with the enforcers simply being the dominant crime syndicate.
Say what? I have no idea of what you just said. Are you hinting at some sort of new Marxian dialectic or something?
What, because I used the word "class"?
I made that comment because there is no hint in your responses of addressing the obvious question of applying surveillance to the agents of a civilian government.
To paraphrase an earlier poster, there is every expectation of privacy if turning the tables -- surveilling the police in the same fashion -- would land a citizen in jail (whereas other types of surveillance, like passively photographing cops on the street, should be OK).
But for you and the other professionals in the wider legal field, thinking reciprocally is no longer even a part of your relationship with the general public. You think and behave like class warriors, not civilians.
I'm sure that if Adobe and others imagined their applications running as web services, then we would have their software running on LAMP in spades.
LAMP is a real platform for developing applications. Though it is loosely defined, that is OK because the target 'user' is a sysadmin or webmaster... i.e. a computer expert.
Linux is no target platform for desktop applications (a class of programs that Adobe's lineup epitomizes). It is a kernel partnered with the GNU CLI tools. Everything else(!!) is in flux from distro to distro, and between each update and upgrade within each distro. To a desktop user this looks like absolutely nothing; it does not signify! To a desktop application developer, it looks like a tech support nightmare at the very least.
The major distros are going to have to work together with the Linux Foundation and make LSB stand for a predictable user environment, with a defined set of core software, defined behaviors and a default configuration. Mainly, it has to be (if not the most feature-complete) at once friendly and consistent.
Otherwise, the 'Linux' option (which can be given away for free to run apps that require it) will remain very uninspiring.
-
I have been repeating this message about platforms being necessary for years. No one listens, I suspect because making interface commitments to other developers or sysadmins is all that stokes the FOSS developers heart; making similar commitments to end users just isn't in their nature. In any case, I am going to stop now. Stopping with the advice. Stopping with the (98% ignored) bug reports and testing.
A decade of this is enough. I now hand you over to the likes of Linux-Hater and his rabid minions.
Its probably a good time to remind people that the distributed computing project to search for dangerous NEOs is soon to get under way. Test workunits have already been sent out and the news is that they ran very well.
Re:2008 - The Desktop Linux Dream Is Dead
on
OSCON 2008 Roundup
·
· Score: 1
Yet Unix isn't even close to Linux in terms of the pretense and hubris of trying to sell a desktop solution without defining a platform.
LinuxHater goes overboard now and then, but who doesn't on their blog. In any case, he is neither a news broadcaster nor a newspaper columnist.
BTW I didn't notice homophobia in the blog entry you lined to. But if its any consolation to you, he takes a FOSS blogger to task for some pretty sexist behavior on a developer site. No doubt he is being opportunistic about it, but the upshot is that the more he brings up stuff like this, the more likely he is to get egg on his face if he does any more 'PI' stuff himself.
He did start pushing this theme is labeling the FSF a terrorist organization. I think that's at least a little bit funny, don't you? Tee-hee??
I won't prevent anything *until* residents start linking their 'tails' together to form local area networks of their own. Maybe from there, they can link those LANs up to satellites, microwave links of a combination of alternatives.
Re:2008 - The Desktop Linux Dream Is Dead
on
OSCON 2008 Roundup
·
· Score: 1
It is written in the style of the Unix Hater's Handbook. So yes, its insulting and potty-mouth but it effectively draws the humorless and doctrinaire in, and those are the types with the least tenable ideas and attitudes about "Linux". LinuxHater makes mincemeat of them, showing what a sorry gruel of platitudes and excuses they keep dishing out. IMO he is doing us a big favor.
Check out the article on fonts... the author has his Linux chops and knows well of which he (angrily) speaks.
And really, who would bother to get so angry so often unless he loved something about Linux? Its clear to me and others that he hates it and loves it too.
Re: Adsense, I didn't see any ads on the blog, except the ones for LinuxHater t-shirt/mug things.
If you render these centralized industries irrelevant, they die of neglect.
Yeah, but not before they paranoically come at you and extract their desired pound of flesh.
Otherwise, well-stated. De-centralizing energy, communications and manufacturing will go a long way towards putting megalomaniacs in their place. The process will probably also have to be undertaken with food production as well.
Re:2008 - The Desktop Linux Dream Is Dead
on
OSCON 2008 Roundup
·
· Score: 1
linuxhaters is awesome, right? It's like maddox only somehow dumber and less entertaining (which is itself impressive, I guess).
Err... Maybe I should put it in terms you'll understand:
linuxhaters sucks big hot hard freetard cock!
- freetard
Actually, even Jeremy Alison of SAMBA fame agrees with the general thrust and acknowledges the technical acumen of the LinuxHaters blog. He is a big proponent of free software, GPLv3 etc., yet considers it valuable criticism of the way the community is running things. So I guess that makes you a doctrinaire, humorless, freetard.:p
Re:This is why Shuttleworth is dead wrong
on
OSCON 2008 Roundup
·
· Score: 1
I think you are wrong on many technical points, and that people with your mindset are a large part of the problem preventing a worthwhile FOSS desktop system from being developed.
On a couple of the technical points: If these issues have largely been addressed, then why are my Numlock lights reversed? Why do I have to edit a file in/etc to fix it? And Why has Firefox 3 for Linux gone on for so long with a massive UI bug that is not shared by the OSX and Windows versions?
Why is there no SDK? No default IDE to fill the role of Xcode and Visual Studio? No standard way to install software (RPMs are standard, but how they are installed varies greatly and the dependencies aren't likely to match up anyway)?
As for your customers, I would venture to guess that the Linux users are far more rare and skilled than your Mac and Windows clients. You likely do not have a large and representative sample of average people using a "Linux" desktop.
Windows for Workgroups, to the various other protocols that were used, to Novell dominance in network servers, to Win 95/98/ME/2K and then compare that to Win XP and now to Vista, it is obvious that all these OSes experience every issue you speak about in your post as it relates to Linux.
Sweet-smelling crap. Did you even read my posting? Win95 and DOS systems experienced the downsides of repositories and package managers? O RLY??
I agree that we need to give Linux a more polished image and that technologies need to be adopted to provide that.
"Linux" is a kernel, not a full-fledged operating system or product that is actually recognizable to a person off the street. You might as well be polishing a mirage.
This is why Shuttleworth is dead wrong
on
OSCON 2008 Roundup
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I have used and administered Linux systems for a decade now. Whenever I try to setup a "Linux" desktop such as Ubuntu, there is always a long list of problems that would never, ever afflict a Mac or Windows system.
Here are some of the current problems:
- NumLock light is opposite the NumLock mode (this on a dead-common 104-key setup). We see a very high degree of spurious breakage of what should otherwise be very solid functionality.
- Right-click in Firefox 3.x sometimes executes random context item without even displaying the context menu. This bug remained in the 3.0 GA release (and I doubt Mozilla cares all that much, as they are actually not fond of "Linux" as a PC platform).
- Certain non-GPL drivers keep disappearing whenever a system update happens to include the kernel (an essential design flaw of the Linux kernel, though a workaround should be possible).
- Video settings keep getting 'reset' after system updates. The user is then often deprived of a workable UI and they are told to edit xorg.conf from a CLI! Bizzarrely, Xorg and the others will supply example GUI apps (like a clock) but won't write a GUI to manage the display. The 'experts' at the Xorg and Xfree projects also have no concept of a usable 'fallback' mode for a desktop display, say switching to XGA res and framebuffer mode when things go wrong. Supposedly this would be "up to the distro" to take care of, but "the distro" doesn't have the comprehensive knowledge to make an integrated fail-safe display configurator (or not a good one).
- NetworkManager in the Control Panel having a markedly different feature set than the seperate network manager that resides on the "systray"... and that stamp over each others' settings particularly when Wifi is used. This is disgraceful.
- Poor support for a wide range of devices, large and small, internal and USB: TV tuners, modems, Wifi, etc. Even video cards are still a problem.
- Audio blockages in inexpensive hardware. Don't rely on calendar alarms, nor softphones, nor audible status indicators because they may turn out to be inaudible - you never know. And ever it shall be through last year's fashionable audio architecture, and probably next year's too.
- High power consumption on both desktops and notebooks. On desktops, starting many programs will spin-up all of my drives 'just because'. And why a file dialog that pops up with my home directory needs to spin up all of my drives is beyond me. It certainly isn't needed on other desktop OSes. I can't tell you the number of times that changing the display res or doing a system update has remove the power-saving option from xorg.conf. Also, many other examples of low battery life on laptops.
Other observations:
- File browsing is very screwed-up. The browsers keep displaying data through differing schemas, often within the same program, and they have differing ways of describing a file path. Even when they stick to a URL format, the 'handler' part can be made-up and non-sensical, conflicting with other parts of the same utility for accessing the same resource. When file dialogs from other apps are brought into the picture, the confusion becomes severe.
- Drivers: There is no standardization and logo-branding effort to address the devices problem. Are hardware vendors supposed to put a penguin on the box if their product is compatible? They don't really know, and no one at the Linux Foundation or the major distros is going to approach them about this simple but essential practice. There is also no ABI, but I won't "go there".
- Drivers: The group that is responsible for adding and maintaining most device support isn't interested in providing a simple way to find out whether a particular device is supported. Because, you know, that would be interfacing with end-users... Ick.
- Apps: Try doing tech support for a "Linux" application. I have done it for a living! There is literally no way to predict what sort of UI you will have to guide them through or which supporti
The Skype network has something called 'supernodes' which among other things, route actual call data for Skype-Skype calls. Initially this alternative to direct P2P links was only supposed to be used to help clients overcome NAT/firewall blockages. But since the client has to consult Skype-controlled directory servers before making a connection, there's nothing stopping them from updating the client to follow an order to route through a supernode even when it isn't otherwise necessary. No doubt, they could have the client use a key of they choosing too.
Slashdot Mirror
Not only is there no method of inspecting the "mechanics" or logic (one transistor or bit out of billions could throw an election) of these Black Box Voting machines, but the prospects of forensic investigation are extremely poor.
It is hard enough maintaining security/integrity in computerized transactions these days even when the identity of both parties is known and a statement/receipt is generated. But where the user is necessarily anonymous, accountability with computers goes out the window.
Computerized "ballots" (those not submitted as physical objects) can't truly exist and must be banned.
...you can choose your news & entertainment on the Internet with the cap hovering over you. Or you can be rewarded with 'extra' access to the Internet for the same price - as long as you allow Comcast to force feed their preferred "news" and entertainment to you.
People who accept the force-feeding get more service.
2 full length movies per day basically...
Or about 0.5 HD movies per day, or around 0.2 if you torrent.
The point is that the certificate authorities FAIL to provide that assurance and further represent a burden that this technology now alleviates. With this technology that assurance is provided without the need for the biased and profit motivated certificate authorities.
You miss the point of web certificates. They do not verify a person or corporation's existence (a silly goal), they verify an address.
I don't want web certs to certify birth certificates, corporate charters, or how nice/bad some authority thinks the site operators are.
I need to know the 'rentalgeek.com' my computer is currently talking with is the same site that got registered by whoever the rightful owners are. THAT is the only identity which can be readily verified start-to-finish over the Internet. I need to know the address hasn't been hijacked by a group that didn't register the domain.
Now whether 'ba.com' belongs to Bank Of America or the Boomerang Association or Ben Affleck is entirely up to me, the user, to determine through inputs I receive from web searches, yellow pages, snailmail correspondence, billboards, and links on sites that I reasonably trust. THERE IS NO WAY AROUND THIS.
Why should someone jump in just to create a list for something they may not understand? Plenty of others from the outside have failed at making a Linux HCL.
People who need such a list in the first place are not likely to be able to compile a good one.
Someone already in the position of coordinating additions and updates to the kernel should create and update a hardware compatibility list. It should be a very simple task for a Linux Torvalds or an Alan Cox.
Then, someone else can take that information and turn it into a search page that your average PC buyer can understand and use.
Debian doesn't support it because Debian doesn't have a proper 'rpm' command for the user to execute; alien doesn't count.
Furthermore, package names often differ somewhat between various distro repositories, so the dependencies too frequently can't be resolved.
Do you expect hardware that's made for a Mac to run in a PC?
Actually I expect hardware that's made for a Mac/PC to be clearly indicated as such somewhere. However the Linux Foundation doesn't promote identifying Linux compatibility on the hardware packaging the way MS and Apple do with their respective OSes.
You might say that is so because most of the work for drivers is undertaken by kernel hackers themselves. But said hackers only list the compatible CPUs for the kernel... they do not make any single compatibility reference (HCL) for other devices.
This makes me think that the kernel hackers are really only interested in catering to others like themselves, who don't mind keeping tabs on the kernel mailing list. Their expectations of end-users patience and abilities is entirely unrealistic.
There is no hardware compatibility list anywhere on that page (which is barely readable as it is).
Let's face it: The closest thing to a concise 'compatibility' list to kernel hackers is a listing of supported CPU architectures.
I couldn't care less that you could care less.
You say it doesn't concern the Fourth Amendment because the courts define "reasonable expectation of privacy" in a deranged manner with respect to new technology they treat like magic.
You are trying to make your point myopically, from the standpoint of your socio-economic class. Together with the political class (by which I also mean "industry" lobbyists) "you" have locked up over 17% of the current adult population with over 1% presently in the slammer. You openly use the tactics and dialectic of civil war on an increasing number of issues, lately the "war on terror", such that many urban neighborhoods are effectively Constitution-free zones. And you increasingly prey on the most helpless/hapless members of society, the easy targets, while viewing bigger criminals as necessary evils to advance one's power base.
I suppose I could lobby to correct problems from the legislative side. But buying-off politicians is standard practice with our "system" of government, and there are far richer lobbyists acting to expand the lucrative police-state industry. Coming from the other end, the "Fourth Estate" is now nothing but a cartel of conglomerate mouthpieces for whom any candidate standing apart from their tradition of increasingly concentrated wealth must be vilified or ridiculed. Even the more 'independent' entities with a broadcast TV presence have pretty much the same major shareholders as the other networks, defense and homeland security contractors, power companies, mercenary armies, etc. The real watchdogs are left to chirp from blogs, for crisesake.
And frankly, I don't see why I have to address the issue.
Because you don't see that you and I and a cop are all civilians supposedly subject to the same laws. It is assumed that cops work professionally with the courts. But if warrants are no longer required to track or cyber-stalk someone, then there needs to be a proper explanation (which I doubt exists) that places this activity within the context of a "free" society. Otherwise, the conclusion people will increasingly make is that the USA has become a repressive police state, with the enforcers simply being the dominant crime syndicate.
Say what? I have no idea of what you just said. Are you hinting at some sort of new Marxian dialectic or something?
What, because I used the word "class"?
I made that comment because there is no hint in your responses of addressing the obvious question of applying surveillance to the agents of a civilian government.
ChrisMP1 is correct. Being seen in public is not the same as being tracked, electronically or otherwise.
From what I gather, your legal brief justifies stalking in public.
To paraphrase an earlier poster, there is every expectation of privacy if turning the tables -- surveilling the police in the same fashion -- would land a citizen in jail (whereas other types of surveillance, like passively photographing cops on the street, should be OK).
But for you and the other professionals in the wider legal field, thinking reciprocally is no longer even a part of your relationship with the general public. You think and behave like class warriors, not civilians.
Surely not 'Linux'...
I'm sure that if Adobe and others imagined their applications running as web services, then we would have their software running on LAMP in spades.
LAMP is a real platform for developing applications. Though it is loosely defined, that is OK because the target 'user' is a sysadmin or webmaster... i.e. a computer expert.
Linux is no target platform for desktop applications (a class of programs that Adobe's lineup epitomizes). It is a kernel partnered with the GNU CLI tools. Everything else(!!) is in flux from distro to distro, and between each update and upgrade within each distro. To a desktop user this looks like absolutely nothing; it does not signify! To a desktop application developer, it looks like a tech support nightmare at the very least.
The major distros are going to have to work together with the Linux Foundation and make LSB stand for a predictable user environment, with a defined set of core software, defined behaviors and a default configuration. Mainly, it has to be (if not the most feature-complete) at once friendly and consistent.
Otherwise, the 'Linux' option (which can be given away for free to run apps that require it) will remain very uninspiring.
-
I have been repeating this message about platforms being necessary for years. No one listens, I suspect because making interface commitments to other developers or sysadmins is all that stokes the FOSS developers heart; making similar commitments to end users just isn't in their nature. In any case, I am going to stop now. Stopping with the advice. Stopping with the (98% ignored) bug reports and testing.
A decade of this is enough. I now hand you over to the likes of Linux-Hater and his rabid minions.
In scifi, the Vasimir would be more likely to power this.
Its probably a good time to remind people that the distributed computing project to search for dangerous NEOs is soon to get under way. Test workunits have already been sent out and the news is that they ran very well.
Yet Unix isn't even close to Linux in terms of the pretense and hubris of trying to sell a desktop solution without defining a platform.
LinuxHater goes overboard now and then, but who doesn't on their blog. In any case, he is neither a news broadcaster nor a newspaper columnist.
BTW I didn't notice homophobia in the blog entry you lined to. But if its any consolation to you, he takes a FOSS blogger to task for some pretty sexist behavior on a developer site. No doubt he is being opportunistic about it, but the upshot is that the more he brings up stuff like this, the more likely he is to get egg on his face if he does any more 'PI' stuff himself.
He did start pushing this theme is labeling the FSF a terrorist organization. I think that's at least a little bit funny, don't you? Tee-hee??
I won't prevent anything *until* residents start linking their 'tails' together to form local area networks of their own. Maybe from there, they can link those LANs up to satellites, microwave links of a combination of alternatives.
It is written in the style of the Unix Hater's Handbook. So yes, its insulting and potty-mouth but it effectively draws the humorless and doctrinaire in, and those are the types with the least tenable ideas and attitudes about "Linux". LinuxHater makes mincemeat of them, showing what a sorry gruel of platitudes and excuses they keep dishing out. IMO he is doing us a big favor.
Check out the article on fonts... the author has his Linux chops and knows well of which he (angrily) speaks.
And really, who would bother to get so angry so often unless he loved something about Linux? Its clear to me and others that he hates it and loves it too.
Re: Adsense, I didn't see any ads on the blog, except the ones for LinuxHater t-shirt/mug things.
If you render these centralized industries irrelevant, they die of neglect.
Yeah, but not before they paranoically come at you and extract their desired pound of flesh.
Otherwise, well-stated. De-centralizing energy, communications and manufacturing will go a long way towards putting megalomaniacs in their place. The process will probably also have to be undertaken with food production as well.
linuxhaters is awesome, right? It's like maddox only somehow dumber and less entertaining (which is itself impressive, I guess).
Err... Maybe I should put it in terms you'll understand:
linuxhaters sucks big hot hard freetard cock!
- freetard
Actually, even Jeremy Alison of SAMBA fame agrees with the general thrust and acknowledges the technical acumen of the LinuxHaters blog. He is a big proponent of free software, GPLv3 etc., yet considers it valuable criticism of the way the community is running things. So I guess that makes you a doctrinaire, humorless, freetard. :p
I think you are wrong on many technical points, and that people with your mindset are a large part of the problem preventing a worthwhile FOSS desktop system from being developed.
On a couple of the technical points: If these issues have largely been addressed, then why are my Numlock lights reversed? Why do I have to edit a file in /etc to fix it? And Why has Firefox 3 for Linux gone on for so long with a massive UI bug that is not shared by the OSX and Windows versions?
Why is there no SDK? No default IDE to fill the role of Xcode and Visual Studio? No standard way to install software (RPMs are standard, but how they are installed varies greatly and the dependencies aren't likely to match up anyway)?
As for your customers, I would venture to guess that the Linux users are far more rare and skilled than your Mac and Windows clients. You likely do not have a large and representative sample of average people using a "Linux" desktop.
Windows for Workgroups, to the various other protocols that were used, to Novell dominance in network servers, to Win 95/98/ME/2K and then compare that to Win XP and now to Vista, it is obvious that all these OSes experience every issue you speak about in your post as it relates to Linux.
Sweet-smelling crap. Did you even read my posting? Win95 and DOS systems experienced the downsides of repositories and package managers? O RLY??
I agree that we need to give Linux a more polished image and that technologies need to be adopted to provide that.
"Linux" is a kernel, not a full-fledged operating system or product that is actually recognizable to a person off the street. You might as well be polishing a mirage.
Have a nice day.
youtube link.
I have used and administered Linux systems for a decade now. Whenever I try to setup a "Linux" desktop such as Ubuntu, there is always a long list of problems that would never, ever afflict a Mac or Windows system.
Here are some of the current problems:
- NumLock light is opposite the NumLock mode (this on a dead-common 104-key setup). We see a very high degree of spurious breakage of what should otherwise be very solid functionality.
- Right-click in Firefox 3.x sometimes executes random context item without even displaying the context menu. This bug remained in the 3.0 GA release (and I doubt Mozilla cares all that much, as they are actually not fond of "Linux" as a PC platform).
- Certain non-GPL drivers keep disappearing whenever a system update happens to include the kernel (an essential design flaw of the Linux kernel, though a workaround should be possible).
- Video settings keep getting 'reset' after system updates. The user is then often deprived of a workable UI and they are told to edit xorg.conf from a CLI! Bizzarrely, Xorg and the others will supply example GUI apps (like a clock) but won't write a GUI to manage the display. The 'experts' at the Xorg and Xfree projects also have no concept of a usable 'fallback' mode for a desktop display, say switching to XGA res and framebuffer mode when things go wrong. Supposedly this would be "up to the distro" to take care of, but "the distro" doesn't have the comprehensive knowledge to make an integrated fail-safe display configurator (or not a good one).
- NetworkManager in the Control Panel having a markedly different feature set than the seperate network manager that resides on the "systray"... and that stamp over each others' settings particularly when Wifi is used. This is disgraceful.
- Poor support for a wide range of devices, large and small, internal and USB: TV tuners, modems, Wifi, etc. Even video cards are still a problem.
- Audio blockages in inexpensive hardware. Don't rely on calendar alarms, nor softphones, nor audible status indicators because they may turn out to be inaudible - you never know. And ever it shall be through last year's fashionable audio architecture, and probably next year's too.
- High power consumption on both desktops and notebooks. On desktops, starting many programs will spin-up all of my drives 'just because'. And why a file dialog that pops up with my home directory needs to spin up all of my drives is beyond me. It certainly isn't needed on other desktop OSes. I can't tell you the number of times that changing the display res or doing a system update has remove the power-saving option from xorg.conf. Also, many other examples of low battery life on laptops.
Other observations:
- File browsing is very screwed-up. The browsers keep displaying data through differing schemas, often within the same program, and they have differing ways of describing a file path. Even when they stick to a URL format, the 'handler' part can be made-up and non-sensical, conflicting with other parts of the same utility for accessing the same resource. When file dialogs from other apps are brought into the picture, the confusion becomes severe.
- Drivers: There is no standardization and logo-branding effort to address the devices problem. Are hardware vendors supposed to put a penguin on the box if their product is compatible? They don't really know, and no one at the Linux Foundation or the major distros is going to approach them about this simple but essential practice. There is also no ABI, but I won't "go there".
- Drivers: The group that is responsible for adding and maintaining most device support isn't interested in providing a simple way to find out whether a particular device is supported. Because, you know, that would be interfacing with end-users... Ick.
- Apps: Try doing tech support for a "Linux" application. I have done it for a living! There is literally no way to predict what sort of UI you will have to guide them through or which supporti
The Skype network has something called 'supernodes' which among other things, route actual call data for Skype-Skype calls. Initially this alternative to direct P2P links was only supposed to be used to help clients overcome NAT/firewall blockages. But since the client has to consult Skype-controlled directory servers before making a connection, there's nothing stopping them from updating the client to follow an order to route through a supernode even when it isn't otherwise necessary. No doubt, they could have the client use a key of they choosing too.