The 2A argument is a bit different. Personally, I can see both sides. Some of that may be my American (and southern) upbringing and environment, but to me, I can see both sides. One side argues that society is safer with guns because police can't be there in 5 seconds and you can protect yourself with one, the other side argues that a proliferation of guns is what makes society unsafe and that adding more guns to the mix just makes it worse. Both are valid points. Both sides, from what I've seen, have made valid points at times, and stupid points at others. This to me makes me think that the whole issue is far too complex for a simple binary choice, and also that our society's problems are a lot more complex than whether people have easy access to guns or not. I could go on and on about this subject, but at the very core, both sides have the exact same goal: a safe society for everyone. Neither side wants a society plagued by crime and violence, they just disagree on whether having legal access to guns helps or hurts this.
Gay rights is rather different. At its core, it's about equality: should homosexuals have the same rights as everyone else? Should they be allowed to live their lives peaceably, or should they live in fear and hide their orientation for fear of being ridiculed, harmed, or murdered? I honestly don't see how it's any different than civil rights for minority races. The only justification for oppressing gays is purely religious, and not based on anything rational at all. People hate them because they're different, and that's it.
That said, as for various smart people you listed, everyone does stupid stuff from time to time. I like to believe that we should *try* to be smart in our actions and beliefs, rather than being content to be dumb, but even the smartest of us do stupid things sometimes. Also, not everyone is smart in every subject. Being good at math for instance doesn't mean you've seriously thought much about ethics.
Saudi Arabia isn't the #3 country by population in the world. America is. It doesn't matter what the rest of the world's Christians are doing, America has a huge chunk of them, and quite possibly a majority of Protestants. Most of the other heavily-Christian nations in the world are Catholic (Latin America plus the southern European nations like Spain and Italy). The other Protestant nations aren't very religious for the most part; Germany for instance is the birthplace of Protestantism (Luther), and most Christians there are probably Protestant, but Germany is not a highly religious country these days. America is. America is also the country where its fundie/evangelical Protestants are sending missionaries to Africa and converting everyone there to their brand of Christianity, and as a result, African nations are trying to pass laws legalizing murder of homosexuals.
Wrong. It isn't some "tiny subset", it's a huge number of Christians in America who are like this. Look how many American Christians believe in the Rapture. IIRC, that's based on one tiny passage in Revelations. But probably about half of Protestants in this country believe that and watch Christian movies about how the end is near. One such movie is in Redbox kiosks right now. You don't get your movie in a Redbox kiosk nationwide without having a huge number of potential viewers.
No, they aren't. Many of the "reformed" sects are the worst ones. All those fundamentalist Christians aren't part of the old Roman Catholic church (or any offshoots of it), they're offshoots of the Protestant movement. For all its faults, the Catholic church had a good idea, that just letting people read the Bible themselves and interpret it their own way would lead to all kinds of bad things, so they tried to keep people from doing that; the Protestant reformation is exactly what led to fundamentalism. Of course, the root problem is the whole idea that a book is "holy" and sacrosanct; trying to keep people from reading things for themselves is guaranteed to fail eventually.
Anyway, probably at least 1/2 of Protestants in the US are evangelical and/or fundamentalist. Just look at how popular the "Left Behind" books are and various other wacky Christian media warning everyone of the "Rapture". Calling it a "small minority" is ignoring a very large and serious problem in our society, no different than Muslims ignoring their own extremists and then waking up one day to find that ISIS has taken over their city.
There are plenty of women who are fans of classical literature and baroque music. They just tend to cluster in occupations that do not intersect those of the typical Slashdot reader.
Yes, this is exactly my point.
And as a side, those who consider a college degree in humanities or fine arts a waste of time should not be surprised when their co-workers spend time discussing the Kardashians or Honey Boo Boo.
This is true too. Unfortunately a lot of people in technical professions have this mindset. It's not just them either; I've seen that opinion (non-major classes are a "waste of time") from a lot of different people these days. It seems like most college-educated people these days just don't understand the value of a well-rounded education, and are really using college as a glorified trade school. We've really gotten away from the whole reason Universities were created in the first place.
I listen to brutal death metal but i also listen to Tchaikovsky.
Metal has a fair amount in common, musically, with classical music. Metal typically emphasizes complex song structures and virtuosic playing more than other forms of modern music. I'd say country is probably at the opposite end of that spectrum. I like progressive metal like Dream Theater, I also like Bach and Telemann, but I also like Rolling Stones, Boston, AC/DC, etc.
As for all your other interests, none of those carry any kind of political connotations or religious content. None of them indicate that you're a rabid homophobe who thinks the Rapture is coming any day now. Watching Duck Dynasty indicates exactly that. There's nothing wrong with having sexual fantasies or liking different levels of literature and music. There is something wrong (IMO) with watching TV shows or listening to music which pushes moronic religious viewpoints. It's very simple: if you listen to some type of "entertainment" which preaches to you to hate people who were born differently from you, and you buy into this, then you're a moron IMO.
Your choice of lowbrow entertainment may be because you are dumb, or it may be because you are smart but looking for an escape that has oooh shiny and doesn't require deep thought. To draw inferences on intellectual capacity based on what TV shows someone watches is just snobbish.
Bullshit. If I want to do stuff that doesn't involve deep thought, I play some mindless video game (like an old NES game with an emulator, or an old arcade game like Pac-Man), or I go hiking or biking, or maybe watch some silly TV show like Big Bang Theory.
What I don't do is watch a TV show that requires me to listen to a lot of homophobic and religious nonsense, since this show is absolutely famous for this. Watching a show like that (unless it's just to be horrified) absolutely says something about your intellectual capacity and your leanings. This isn't just some un-serious TV drama about some people living in an apartment together.
You probably think being an opera fan indicates higher intelligence than being a death metal fan.
Anyone who knows anything about opera knows that it was considered somewhat lowbrow entertainment during its time; it was made for the masses. Also, anyone who knows much about modern music knows that there's a lot of death metal that is quite complicated and requires a lot of talent and skill to play properly. Metal as a genre is generally fairly complex, as it emphasizes musical virtuosity more than vocals or lyrics (though there's exceptions, like the 80s hair-metal).
However, neither of these typically espouse fundamentalist Christian anti-gay rhetoric.
Maybe, but that's why I was pointing out that this was very likely due to his unique perceptions and experiences. I've had many of the same experiences, due to my choice of profession, and also my lack of socializing or outside activities which have a lot of women in them; it's not because women are necessarily stupider (on average, obviously there's always outliers, as the OP himself pointed out), but quite possibly because he and I have had limited opportunities to meet more intelligent women, and instead have had ample opportunities to meet men similar to ourselves.
Yes, if you really believe there's a "gay agenda" and that homosexuals are bringing God's wrath upon us and that the Rapture will happen any time now, then you are a moron.
Yeah, you need to get over that and try packing up everything and moving somewhere entirely different. You haven't really lived if you haven't ever relocated to someplace very different (and you don't need to go as far as leaving the country and learning a new language; the subcultures in different parts of the US are already very different from each other).
It sounds to me like you're in a place which simply does not have many peers for you, and you're not a good fit for the local culture. I'm in the same place; I (long story) got temporarily stuck in a southeast city that is extremely conservative and has a large military presence, and on top of it I'm separated and trying to date again. I'm like a fish out of water here; there simply isn't anyone here who I have any interest in meeting or spending time with. Luckily, I've gotten a new job offer elsewhere and am relocating within a month, to a place where I think I'll fit in better.
Living in a locale which doesn't fit you can really make you miserable, I've found.
I know all about their religions. Good Christians and Jews, the ones who follow their books, do exactly this. It's right there in the Bible: if your children misbehave, you are to stone them. There's countless such examples. Also, women are to be subservient to men. A large number of Christians in America believe this.
Maybe you should look up the No True Scotsman fallacy.
Education is dangerous to the extremists with beards if women started thinking for themselves then how can they have Sharia law?
Exactly, and on a side note, this perfectly illustrates the mentality of men who have beards. Hipsters and women who are attracted to bearded men, take note.
If you don't care for what other people think or their interests, why would they care about your ideas and interest?
He's not saying he cares one way or another, it was a personal observation, that somehow he has an easy time finding men who share his more intellectual pursuits, and that women who are intellectual are very rare for him to cross paths with. This is likely due to several factors, including his particular career field and geographic locale.
As an engineer, I generally see the exact same thing. However, I don't think it's because women are generally insipid morons (as I said before, it's easy to find men who are big fans of Duck Dynasty), it's because of my career and where I'm located. If I moved to NYC and worked at the NYPL (public library), I'd probably run across tons of women with zero interest in The Kardashians who would love to instead talk about all kinds of intellectual subjects (probably literature). As an engineer, I run across very few women at all, and most of them are administration or HR people, not known to be groups full of intellectuals (and HR people are, in general, just a bunch of morons, no matter their sex).
The only problem with your post here is the bit about your professional and personal life. Where do you live and work that you're surrounded by men on your intellectual level, but all the women are vapid morons?
You should try moving to Manhattan (NYC); there's tons of women there who do nothing but talk about all kinds of academic subjects. Go to OKCupid and read their profiles; they'll drone on and on about their favorite authors, obscure musicians, theater, etc. (I'm not criticizing this, I'm pointing out that this is the culture there.) It's entirely different than, say, some random mid-size city in the southeast, where all the women have pictures of themselves with guns and dead fish and pickup trucks.
It sounds to me like you just live in the wrong place.
No, it's not, it depends on the particular interests. If they have interests such as following the Kardashians and Honey Boo Boo and Duck Dynasty, and you have interests which include baroque music and classical literature, then it's safe to say that you're more intelligent than them.
There's nothing sexist about it. There's no shortage of idiot men who are big fans of Duck Dynasty, and there's relatively few people of either sex who are big fans of more intellectual pursuits like classical literature.
as it is for his followers to keep using those long out-dated moral standards from then in today's world.
The problem is that a large portion of the world's population (that is, everyone who follows an Abrahamic religion, which is probably at least half the global population) does exactly this.
That's the whole problem with these religions: they hold up these "holy books" as "the inerrant word of God", and claim that everyone should follow the moral standards contained in them.
The speed of the growth of the internet is a separate question from general public awareness of it. I am correct in what I wrote that by 1986 the internet was spreading quickly,
That's a good point and an interesting story; I didn't know that before. You're right, that really shows the danger in being a greedy asshole and insisting on high patent royalties or worse not licensing because you want to be the only manufacturer. IIRC, the guy who invented the first working intermittent windshield wipers was like this too; instead of just selling rights to his design to Ford, he insisted on making them himself, and Ford just went around him. He eventually prevailed in court and won a large judgment, but it took a couple of decades or more, plus losing his marriage.
Luckily, we are finally starting to see more and more Robinson and Torx stuff. Philips screws are awful, though the Posi-drive variant is a little better.
Close, but not quite: Microsoft still has the vast majority of desktop OS installations, and they only support their own filesystems.
It's not quite like the screw thing, because there's no single company that dominates screws and screwdrivers. People keep using the same screws because of inertia: everyone's used to flat and phillips screws, and everyone has tools for them, so we keep using them even though they suck. Luckily, more and more stuff is finally moving away from those crappy standards, to Allen (recessed hex), Torx (recessed 6-point star), and Robinson (recessed square). You can get a multi-bit screwdriver and a big set of bits for every kind of screw for less than $10 now.
Just a quibble: IIRC, FAT32 is not covered by any patents at all. It's the "exFAT" filesystem which is patent-protected. FAT32 stopped being useful when portable flash cards passed (IIRC) 2 or 4GB in capacity. exFAT does a somewhat better job with large devices like this, but still, you're right, the only reason people use it is because it's ubiquitous and everything supports it, most importantly Windows, not because it's a great filesystem. So yeah, you could argue that this is illegal leveraging of their desktop monopoly. Too bad no one wants to spend the $$$ to challenge them in court over this.
No, you're entirely missing the point. Kubuntu gets next-to-no-usage because it's not a prime-time distro, it's just a small obscure variant of one. Not only that, Kubuntu is just a vanilla KDE setup (which is fine if you like regular KDE Plasma).
My proposal is that Ubuntu dump Unity and the GTK3 plumbing it sits on and adopt KDE instead. People already complain a lot about Unity being slow, and all evidence points to KDE being lighter weight and better performing than Gnome or Unity, due to superior architecture. However, Ubuntu likely doesn't just want to be a KDE distro for whatever reason; obviously they're trying to explore and push different UI concepts with Unity. That's OK: KDE lets you do that, when you have the development resources that Ubuntu enjoys. KDE already has several different versions of Plasma for different devices (desktop, netbook, mobile); the architecture allows you to have a completely different UI sitting on top of KDE's infrastructure. So Canonical wouldn't have such a difficult time developing their own UI (just another version of Plasma) which sits on top of KDE and benefits from its excellent under-the-hood architecture and performance, while letting them easily explore whatever new UI trends they want to try out. And then, anyone who doesn't like that can *trivially* just switch back to plasma-desktop and get a vanilla KDE experience if they want, without needing a whole new distro (or distro variant).
No, Gnome shell is no better than Unity, and probably worse. They both suck.
Ubuntu should just switch to a customized version of KDE. KDE has a far better underlying architecture than Gnome, and it's not that hard to make a different version of Plasma if you're a distro that wants to do things a bit differently.
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A few points:
The 2A argument is a bit different. Personally, I can see both sides. Some of that may be my American (and southern) upbringing and environment, but to me, I can see both sides. One side argues that society is safer with guns because police can't be there in 5 seconds and you can protect yourself with one, the other side argues that a proliferation of guns is what makes society unsafe and that adding more guns to the mix just makes it worse. Both are valid points. Both sides, from what I've seen, have made valid points at times, and stupid points at others. This to me makes me think that the whole issue is far too complex for a simple binary choice, and also that our society's problems are a lot more complex than whether people have easy access to guns or not. I could go on and on about this subject, but at the very core, both sides have the exact same goal: a safe society for everyone. Neither side wants a society plagued by crime and violence, they just disagree on whether having legal access to guns helps or hurts this.
Gay rights is rather different. At its core, it's about equality: should homosexuals have the same rights as everyone else? Should they be allowed to live their lives peaceably, or should they live in fear and hide their orientation for fear of being ridiculed, harmed, or murdered? I honestly don't see how it's any different than civil rights for minority races. The only justification for oppressing gays is purely religious, and not based on anything rational at all. People hate them because they're different, and that's it.
That said, as for various smart people you listed, everyone does stupid stuff from time to time. I like to believe that we should *try* to be smart in our actions and beliefs, rather than being content to be dumb, but even the smartest of us do stupid things sometimes. Also, not everyone is smart in every subject. Being good at math for instance doesn't mean you've seriously thought much about ethics.
Saudi Arabia isn't the #3 country by population in the world. America is. It doesn't matter what the rest of the world's Christians are doing, America has a huge chunk of them, and quite possibly a majority of Protestants. Most of the other heavily-Christian nations in the world are Catholic (Latin America plus the southern European nations like Spain and Italy). The other Protestant nations aren't very religious for the most part; Germany for instance is the birthplace of Protestantism (Luther), and most Christians there are probably Protestant, but Germany is not a highly religious country these days. America is. America is also the country where its fundie/evangelical Protestants are sending missionaries to Africa and converting everyone there to their brand of Christianity, and as a result, African nations are trying to pass laws legalizing murder of homosexuals.
Wrong. It isn't some "tiny subset", it's a huge number of Christians in America who are like this. Look how many American Christians believe in the Rapture. IIRC, that's based on one tiny passage in Revelations. But probably about half of Protestants in this country believe that and watch Christian movies about how the end is near. One such movie is in Redbox kiosks right now. You don't get your movie in a Redbox kiosk nationwide without having a huge number of potential viewers.
What about the people in the middle east getting killed in the conflicts there? Don't they matter too? Why aren't we talking about them?
This article isn't about the earthquake, this is about an avalanche.
No, they aren't. Many of the "reformed" sects are the worst ones. All those fundamentalist Christians aren't part of the old Roman Catholic church (or any offshoots of it), they're offshoots of the Protestant movement. For all its faults, the Catholic church had a good idea, that just letting people read the Bible themselves and interpret it their own way would lead to all kinds of bad things, so they tried to keep people from doing that; the Protestant reformation is exactly what led to fundamentalism. Of course, the root problem is the whole idea that a book is "holy" and sacrosanct; trying to keep people from reading things for themselves is guaranteed to fail eventually.
Anyway, probably at least 1/2 of Protestants in the US are evangelical and/or fundamentalist. Just look at how popular the "Left Behind" books are and various other wacky Christian media warning everyone of the "Rapture". Calling it a "small minority" is ignoring a very large and serious problem in our society, no different than Muslims ignoring their own extremists and then waking up one day to find that ISIS has taken over their city.
There are plenty of women who are fans of classical literature and baroque music. They just tend to cluster in occupations that do not intersect those of the typical Slashdot reader.
Yes, this is exactly my point.
And as a side, those who consider a college degree in humanities or fine arts a waste of time should not be surprised when their co-workers spend time discussing the Kardashians or Honey Boo Boo.
This is true too. Unfortunately a lot of people in technical professions have this mindset. It's not just them either; I've seen that opinion (non-major classes are a "waste of time") from a lot of different people these days. It seems like most college-educated people these days just don't understand the value of a well-rounded education, and are really using college as a glorified trade school. We've really gotten away from the whole reason Universities were created in the first place.
I listen to brutal death metal but i also listen to Tchaikovsky.
Metal has a fair amount in common, musically, with classical music. Metal typically emphasizes complex song structures and virtuosic playing more than other forms of modern music. I'd say country is probably at the opposite end of that spectrum. I like progressive metal like Dream Theater, I also like Bach and Telemann, but I also like Rolling Stones, Boston, AC/DC, etc.
As for all your other interests, none of those carry any kind of political connotations or religious content. None of them indicate that you're a rabid homophobe who thinks the Rapture is coming any day now. Watching Duck Dynasty indicates exactly that. There's nothing wrong with having sexual fantasies or liking different levels of literature and music. There is something wrong (IMO) with watching TV shows or listening to music which pushes moronic religious viewpoints. It's very simple: if you listen to some type of "entertainment" which preaches to you to hate people who were born differently from you, and you buy into this, then you're a moron IMO.
Your choice of lowbrow entertainment may be because you are dumb, or it may be because you are smart but looking for an escape that has oooh shiny and doesn't require deep thought. To draw inferences on intellectual capacity based on what TV shows someone watches is just snobbish.
Bullshit. If I want to do stuff that doesn't involve deep thought, I play some mindless video game (like an old NES game with an emulator, or an old arcade game like Pac-Man), or I go hiking or biking, or maybe watch some silly TV show like Big Bang Theory.
What I don't do is watch a TV show that requires me to listen to a lot of homophobic and religious nonsense, since this show is absolutely famous for this. Watching a show like that (unless it's just to be horrified) absolutely says something about your intellectual capacity and your leanings. This isn't just some un-serious TV drama about some people living in an apartment together.
You probably think being an opera fan indicates higher intelligence than being a death metal fan.
Anyone who knows anything about opera knows that it was considered somewhat lowbrow entertainment during its time; it was made for the masses. Also, anyone who knows much about modern music knows that there's a lot of death metal that is quite complicated and requires a lot of talent and skill to play properly. Metal as a genre is generally fairly complex, as it emphasizes musical virtuosity more than vocals or lyrics (though there's exceptions, like the 80s hair-metal).
However, neither of these typically espouse fundamentalist Christian anti-gay rhetoric.
Maybe, but that's why I was pointing out that this was very likely due to his unique perceptions and experiences. I've had many of the same experiences, due to my choice of profession, and also my lack of socializing or outside activities which have a lot of women in them; it's not because women are necessarily stupider (on average, obviously there's always outliers, as the OP himself pointed out), but quite possibly because he and I have had limited opportunities to meet more intelligent women, and instead have had ample opportunities to meet men similar to ourselves.
Yes, if you really believe there's a "gay agenda" and that homosexuals are bringing God's wrath upon us and that the Rapture will happen any time now, then you are a moron.
No True Scotsman.
You're just another religionist trying to say that 99.9% of other people in your religion are "doing it wrong".'
Yeah, you need to get over that and try packing up everything and moving somewhere entirely different. You haven't really lived if you haven't ever relocated to someplace very different (and you don't need to go as far as leaving the country and learning a new language; the subcultures in different parts of the US are already very different from each other).
It sounds to me like you're in a place which simply does not have many peers for you, and you're not a good fit for the local culture. I'm in the same place; I (long story) got temporarily stuck in a southeast city that is extremely conservative and has a large military presence, and on top of it I'm separated and trying to date again. I'm like a fish out of water here; there simply isn't anyone here who I have any interest in meeting or spending time with. Luckily, I've gotten a new job offer elsewhere and am relocating within a month, to a place where I think I'll fit in better.
Living in a locale which doesn't fit you can really make you miserable, I've found.
Is watching Duck Dynasty any worse than playing GTA?
Yes.
GTA is just a video game. It doesn't carry a bunch of religion and conservative philosophy and politics along with it. Duck Dynasty does.
An interest in Duck Dynasty is not mutually exclusive with an interest in classical literature.
Yes, it is. Anyone stupid enough to buy into the conservative idiocy that Robertson spouts is not going to have any interest in academic topics.
I know all about their religions. Good Christians and Jews, the ones who follow their books, do exactly this. It's right there in the Bible: if your children misbehave, you are to stone them. There's countless such examples. Also, women are to be subservient to men. A large number of Christians in America believe this.
Maybe you should look up the No True Scotsman fallacy.
Education is dangerous to the extremists with beards if women started thinking for themselves then how can they have Sharia law?
Exactly, and on a side note, this perfectly illustrates the mentality of men who have beards. Hipsters and women who are attracted to bearded men, take note.
If you don't care for what other people think or their interests, why would they care about your ideas and interest?
He's not saying he cares one way or another, it was a personal observation, that somehow he has an easy time finding men who share his more intellectual pursuits, and that women who are intellectual are very rare for him to cross paths with. This is likely due to several factors, including his particular career field and geographic locale.
As an engineer, I generally see the exact same thing. However, I don't think it's because women are generally insipid morons (as I said before, it's easy to find men who are big fans of Duck Dynasty), it's because of my career and where I'm located. If I moved to NYC and worked at the NYPL (public library), I'd probably run across tons of women with zero interest in The Kardashians who would love to instead talk about all kinds of intellectual subjects (probably literature). As an engineer, I run across very few women at all, and most of them are administration or HR people, not known to be groups full of intellectuals (and HR people are, in general, just a bunch of morons, no matter their sex).
The only problem with your post here is the bit about your professional and personal life. Where do you live and work that you're surrounded by men on your intellectual level, but all the women are vapid morons?
You should try moving to Manhattan (NYC); there's tons of women there who do nothing but talk about all kinds of academic subjects. Go to OKCupid and read their profiles; they'll drone on and on about their favorite authors, obscure musicians, theater, etc. (I'm not criticizing this, I'm pointing out that this is the culture there.) It's entirely different than, say, some random mid-size city in the southeast, where all the women have pictures of themselves with guns and dead fish and pickup trucks.
It sounds to me like you just live in the wrong place.
No, it's not, it depends on the particular interests. If they have interests such as following the Kardashians and Honey Boo Boo and Duck Dynasty, and you have interests which include baroque music and classical literature, then it's safe to say that you're more intelligent than them.
There's nothing sexist about it. There's no shortage of idiot men who are big fans of Duck Dynasty, and there's relatively few people of either sex who are big fans of more intellectual pursuits like classical literature.
as it is for his followers to keep using those long out-dated moral standards from then in today's world.
The problem is that a large portion of the world's population (that is, everyone who follows an Abrahamic religion, which is probably at least half the global population) does exactly this.
That's the whole problem with these religions: they hold up these "holy books" as "the inerrant word of God", and claim that everyone should follow the moral standards contained in them.
The speed of the growth of the internet is a separate question from general public awareness of it. I am correct in what I wrote that by 1986 the internet was spreading quickly,
https://xkcd.com/1102/
That's a good point and an interesting story; I didn't know that before. You're right, that really shows the danger in being a greedy asshole and insisting on high patent royalties or worse not licensing because you want to be the only manufacturer. IIRC, the guy who invented the first working intermittent windshield wipers was like this too; instead of just selling rights to his design to Ford, he insisted on making them himself, and Ford just went around him. He eventually prevailed in court and won a large judgment, but it took a couple of decades or more, plus losing his marriage.
Luckily, we are finally starting to see more and more Robinson and Torx stuff. Philips screws are awful, though the Posi-drive variant is a little better.
Close, but not quite: Microsoft still has the vast majority of desktop OS installations, and they only support their own filesystems.
It's not quite like the screw thing, because there's no single company that dominates screws and screwdrivers. People keep using the same screws because of inertia: everyone's used to flat and phillips screws, and everyone has tools for them, so we keep using them even though they suck. Luckily, more and more stuff is finally moving away from those crappy standards, to Allen (recessed hex), Torx (recessed 6-point star), and Robinson (recessed square). You can get a multi-bit screwdriver and a big set of bits for every kind of screw for less than $10 now.
Just a quibble: IIRC, FAT32 is not covered by any patents at all. It's the "exFAT" filesystem which is patent-protected. FAT32 stopped being useful when portable flash cards passed (IIRC) 2 or 4GB in capacity. exFAT does a somewhat better job with large devices like this, but still, you're right, the only reason people use it is because it's ubiquitous and everything supports it, most importantly Windows, not because it's a great filesystem. So yeah, you could argue that this is illegal leveraging of their desktop monopoly. Too bad no one wants to spend the $$$ to challenge them in court over this.
No, you're entirely missing the point. Kubuntu gets next-to-no-usage because it's not a prime-time distro, it's just a small obscure variant of one. Not only that, Kubuntu is just a vanilla KDE setup (which is fine if you like regular KDE Plasma).
My proposal is that Ubuntu dump Unity and the GTK3 plumbing it sits on and adopt KDE instead. People already complain a lot about Unity being slow, and all evidence points to KDE being lighter weight and better performing than Gnome or Unity, due to superior architecture. However, Ubuntu likely doesn't just want to be a KDE distro for whatever reason; obviously they're trying to explore and push different UI concepts with Unity. That's OK: KDE lets you do that, when you have the development resources that Ubuntu enjoys. KDE already has several different versions of Plasma for different devices (desktop, netbook, mobile); the architecture allows you to have a completely different UI sitting on top of KDE's infrastructure. So Canonical wouldn't have such a difficult time developing their own UI (just another version of Plasma) which sits on top of KDE and benefits from its excellent under-the-hood architecture and performance, while letting them easily explore whatever new UI trends they want to try out. And then, anyone who doesn't like that can *trivially* just switch back to plasma-desktop and get a vanilla KDE experience if they want, without needing a whole new distro (or distro variant).
No, Gnome shell is no better than Unity, and probably worse. They both suck.
Ubuntu should just switch to a customized version of KDE. KDE has a far better underlying architecture than Gnome, and it's not that hard to make a different version of Plasma if you're a distro that wants to do things a bit differently.