1) ban old vehicles. Sorry, no exemptions for "classics" (esp. not garbage cars from the 70s-80s). Put them in a museum where they belong (private museums are ok). If you really want to drive a historic car, you can transplant a newer engine into it.
1a) compromise: keep the old-car exemption, but increase the cut-off date. 80s cars are not "classics", nor the ugly cars from the 70s.
2) ban 2-cycle engines, typically used in portable lawn equipment (trimmers/edgers, leafblowers). These spew an incredible amount of nasty emissions. The weedwacker makers can make 4-cycle engines instead; anyone too weak to handle the heavier equipment can either hire someone, or convert their lawn to xeriscaping (sp?). To facilitate this, make a state law banning stupid HOAs and other localities from requiring green lawns.
3) pass a law greatly tightening the emissions standards for 4-cycle lawn equipment and boat engines. Lawnmowers are typically 4-cycle, but they're still nasty polluters with engine tech that hasn't changed since the 50s. Microcontrollers are dirt cheap these days, so there's no excuse for them to not use fuel injection, especially on the larger engines like on riding mowers. They don't even need to use the latest GDI technology, just something equivalent to the simplistic EFI cars had in the 80s, and there'll be a big improvement in emissions and fuel economy too.
4) Enact some kind of incentives to move to electric motors for lawn equipment. They already have electric mowers (push and riding); they need to push those more somehow. Stricter emissions regulations would probably make it so the lawnmower makers just give up on gas engines altogether since the electric tech is already here.
5) Pass some kind of legislation to push lithium battery recycling. Right now, lead-acid batteries have an astoundingly high recycling rate; you can take them to any auto parts store, and any place that sells and replaces them for you also recycles them. There's places to take lithium batteries, but it probably needs some more publicity or something. I'm really sick of hearing anti-electric-car idiots talk about the "environmental issues" of lithium, as if these batteries would just tossed in the trash when they get old. For cars, that wouldn't be a problem for the same reason it isn't a problem for lead-acid starting batteries, but for lawn equipment, portable electronics, etc., they need to make sure these things are being recycled safely and properly and not just landfilled, or sent to some 3rd-world country to cause a mess there with shoddy recycling.
6) As for cars, 10 years is too soon for many reasons. Instead, push for a combination of more EVs and more hybrids. I'd say that requiring all cars and trucks to at least be hybrids in 10 years is doable; the tech has been out for quite some time now. A lot of emissions and poor fuel economy are caused by all the stopping and starting in city driving, and hybrids are a big help here. There's even pretty low-cost hybrid systems available that some automakers use; they don't perform as well as the Prius system, but they cost a lot less, and do help economy a decent amount.
As your own link shows, Netflix has gone to some lengths to block customers who use VPN services to get around their geo-blocks.
This isn't a problem for me: I canceled my Netflix subscription. I suggest everyone else disappointed with Netflix's service do the same. You can get all the content you really need on BT.
Also the politicians either stay completely clueless regarding the subject or the bribes are just raising. Otherwise it's unexplainable why the lobbyists aren't simply ignored when they start the same debate after they've lost it previously. In my opinion politicians supporting such crap should be constantly hammered with accusations of corruptness until they leave politics.
The problem is the voters: the voters are supposed to see that these representatives aren't working for them, and vote them out. They don't do that, so they just wait until the small minority of activists aren't paying attention so they can push the legislation through.
I was just trying to explain what I thought his basis was, not defend it. You're right: you can't just look at the exchange rate and say that sums up all the differences; it's a lot more complicated than that.
He's saying that the currency exchange rates make it feasible to export more. Typically, a weaker currency is good for industries that export more, because it makes their goods cheaper on the world market; a strong currency is the opposite, and is good for consumers because they can buy more stuff. Weak currency is good for exporters, but it's bad for their workers because they can't buy as much imported stuff, and taking foreign vacations is expensive for them. Strong currency is bad for exporters, and generally good for workers because they can buy more imported stuff, and enjoy foreign vacations where their currency is more valuable than the local currency, but the downside is that their job is in peril if they're in an exporting industry because they're not competitive with countries with weaker currencies.
The bottom line though is that the currency strength is largely under the control of the government, so if they don't like it that countries with weaker currencies are making stuff cheaper just because of the exchange rate, then they're free to weaken their currency if they want to compete. But as shown above, weaker currency has its downsides. Also, things are relative; a weaker currency doesn't make foreign labor magically cheaper: they're still going to gauge their pay based on not just their currency, but other currencies too (because if their currency devalues and suddenly most things get more expensive, due to how ubiquitous foreign trade is, they're going to demand higher pay to compensate). And components and raw materials imported from other places are not affected by the local currency price.
Yep, and these local politicians are the responsibility of the idiots living in these places. Why should they get a subsidy from all the other Verizon customers nationwide? It's amazing how red-state voters think they're always entitled to a handout, but somehow never see it as such, but then bitch about other people receiving "welfare".
maids and cleaning services tend to have staff security checked and a consistent set of workers.
You should use "and/or" here. A lot of people hire maids on Craigslist and pay cash; I've done this in the past. But the key word here is "consistent": when you hire some individual who works for themselves, you're going to get that same person every week, not some new random person you've never met. You'll probably meet that person several times, and get to know them a bit at least. It's not like a delivery service where you can have an entirely different person for every delivery.
Instead of kicking customers out, expand your own network. In fact, do that everywhere instead of punishing people for using it.
There's not enough density in these areas to justify the expense. If you want companies to service unprofitable areas at reasonable prices, you need strong government regulation to make that happen, the way they do in Europe where even in the rural areas like northern Finland they have good coverage, while typical cellular bills are much lower than here in the US. But the rural dwellers here in the US are staunchly opposed to government regulation, so I really don't see the problem here. They're getting exactly what they voted for.
And who do you vote for in the elections? I don't know about you specifically, but all your neighbors vote overwhemingly for the GOP, and one of the biggest parts of the GOP platform is "small government", which means as little regulation as possible, and they've been big-business friendly as long as I've been alive. So maybe you're an exception, but collectively, you rural dwellers are getting exactly what you voted for.
Our government has failed us. More specifically, the FCC.... Ajit Pai is the biggest stinking pile of shit to ever work in our government.
Ajit Pai was appointed by Trump. If you voted for Trump, you have no cause to complain. If you didn't, you should be sure to point this out to your dumb neighbors if they complain. I'm sure the vast majority of them voted for him. I'm sorry, I just don't have much sympathy for a group of people who constantly vote against their own best interests.
Here we have a big corporation taking advantage of people with no other options so they can make more money.
Didn't you read the summary? They have other options: there's local companies they can buy service from, the companies that actually own the towers they're using. Don't give me this "no other options" bullshit. They just don't want to use the small local companies because they cost a lot more and don't have unlimited data.
Companies can't be held to something they advertised decades ago; there's limits. If Verizon has honored their contracts, then they're free to refuse service to these people. They're under no obligation to keep providing them service forever.
Fuck that. I say let Verizon kick these idiots off and maintain their profits. If these people want service, they can buy it from the local carrier and pay high per-GB charges for it.
What you're talking about is government regulation, and that's absolutely the wrong thing here. The people who are affected by this are rural: they all vote for the GOP, the party which is steadfastly against regulation. These same people, I'm sure, have used a bunch of that bandwidth to write idiotic conservative messages on message boards and Facebook talking about how bad regulation is, how we need "small government", etc. Well, let's give them small government!! If they want service, they can get it from the local monopoly and pay through the nose for it, and enjoy the benefits of "small government".
So no, I'm sorry. I have no trouble with what Verizon is doing here.
Sure, go ahead and chop down that tower. It won't hurt Verizon; it's not their tower. It belongs to some other (more local) company, that Verizon was working with to allow roaming.
I think they *should* chop down the tower, because that means they won't have *any* cellular service now, not even from their overpriced local company, and they may even drive that company out of business so they'll never get any service. Sounds good to me. Fuck 'em. They brought this on themselves.
Did the advertising promise them the same rate forever? Somehow I doubt it. Surely Verizon has honored their end of the bargain for the contracted terms, and now wants to simply not renew the contracts. I don't see why they shouldn't have that right.
If I contract to sell you my service for $X/month for the next two years, and after two years I realize I'm losing money on the deal badly, why should I have to extend your contract?
Besides, Verizon is a private company and can do whatever they want, as long as they don't violate the law or break a contract. If you want more interference in their operations, now you're talking about governmental regulation. We shouldn't have any of that here. These people are rural dwellers, which means they're all GOP voters, and a big part of the GOP party platform is to reduce or eliminate regulation wherever possible, and to let companies like Verizon do what they want for maximum profitability. Let these people be hoist by their own petard.
Stupid and shortsighted. Protect a few manufacturing job at companies that can't compete
An import factor here is: who are they competing against? TFS says they can't compete against "cheap" panels from Mexico, China, and *South Korea*. South Korea is NOT a low-cost locale. It's not as expensive for labor as Japan, but it's not cheap either; labor there is surely more expensive than someplace like Alabama. If we can't compete against South Korea on something, that means we're just incompetent, and should throw in the towel.
I guess I didn't explain it well enough before: it's the utter domination of Linux by Gnome that I see as harmful, combined with the fact that I *do* find it all that terrible. I think it's a bloated, buggy, half-assed piece of crap that espouses minimalism on an OS where that shouldn't be needed (if you want minimalism, go buy a Mac; Linux is supposed to be an OS for hackers). Worst of all, customization is completely antithetical to the Gnome worldview: some disagree, and they try to make extensions (which Gnome supporters are always pointing to when people complain), but the extensions break every time they make a new release. The entire philosophy of Gnome I find to be repugnant. Their devs have a holier-than-thou attitude that they're experts in UI design, but they can't even make a file picker that shows thumbnails like every other OS and DE out there. But despite the extreme minimalism, the thing is the biggest RAM hog of all DEs, and according to most reports I've read, is noticeably slower than KDE, which people deride as the kitchen-sink DE. Now if Gnome were just one of many options, I wouldn't give two shits about it, just like I don't pay any attention to Enlightenment. But it's not; it utterly dominates the Linux landscape and is considered the standard DE, with all the large distros pushing it hard. Any distros that don't use Gnome are considered insignificant or deviants.
There's also the issue that I think Gtk is a giant turd of a toolkit. I've looked at it, and I have worked significantly with Qt, and Qt is a dream to do GUI development in. Gtk is a nightmare. And there's the issue of API stability: I know of professional projects that have moved from Gtk to Qt specifically because Gtk is so unstable, and keeps deprecating things that non-Gnome users rely on. That doesn't really happen with Qt.
I use LXDE, so I presume I have bad taste. I don't even do it for the low resource usage, I do it because I like the features and the way it looks. It's pretty easy to customize and rather stable.
That's great, and that's something you don't get with Gnome: easy customization, since they hate that. But are you really using LXDE, or the newer LXQt? From what I've read, LXDE is deprecated now as they've moved to Qt.
So, I use it. It also affords me easy entry into the Ubuntu ecosystem and their resources are vast and easily discoverable.
Personally I use Mint KDE, so I have that some "easy entry", but I also feel like a 3rd-class citizen. I'm glad Mint has a KDE variant and puts some work into it, and I'm glad Mint is around at all (all their variants are things that Ubuntu didn't want to bother with after all; the entire Mint distro is a reaction to Ubuntu), but I can't help but feel that Linux would be better off if they weren't constantly re-inventing the wheel, but there's a good reason they do when all the main distros pick and push such a terrible DE for what appear to be entirely political purposes. I actually liked it better when Ubuntu was doing Unity, because at least that kept some of the focus off Gnome, but now for some dumb reason they went to Gnome when it became apparent their Unity strategy wasn't panning out; it would have been much, much easier for them to go with KDE and then make their own custom version of it using the design concepts from Unity.
Finally, I'll end with a car analogy. Instead of today's landscape where there's roughly a dozen major manufacturers (Ford, GM, Chrysler, Honda, Toyota, Subaru, Mazda, BMW, VW, Mercedes, Volvo, Hyundai) and a bunch of minor ones (it's arguable which are major or minor), suppose for some reason things changed so that there was only one major manufacturer, Ford, and everyone else became a small, bit player. Parts for Fords would be ubiquitous and cheap, and it'd be easy to get them serviced, but buying any other car would be a big PITA, with service hard to find, parts hard to find and expensive, etc. Even getting your car registered with the DMV would be a pain because they'd act
I want something I can configure to be the way I want. No, I will not use extensions; extensions break every time they release a new version; that's very well-documented. I've used Gnome3. It's a complete piece of shit.
Yeah, I do agree that KDE seems to be stretched too thin, and this was especially a problem in the 4.x cycle with all the crap they tried to throw in there. But in our ideal universe where Gnome dies, I think KDE would get some more developer time which would help with the quality and stability problems.
I'm not a big fan of Cinnamon either. I'd rather see KDE take over as the primary DE for Linux. But I think it'd be healthiest for the Linux ecosystem for Gnome to completely die, and all the alternatives to increase their share of the space, so that any incoming user has several very viable alternatives to choose from, rather than one that gets all the glory (undeservedly), while all the others seem to barely be afterthoughts and generally get poo-pooed.
Competition is fine. Domination by something sub-standard is not. That's why Gnome is harmful to Linux. I can't even recommend Linux in good conscience to anyone without being extremely specific about which sub-distro they should use, because if they pick a standard distro running Gnome, they're going to have an awful experience because Gnome is such a piece of shit and such a large departure from what they're used to.
Either they're really that stupid, or they have an agenda
"Never ascribe to malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetence".
I think it's most likely they really are that stupid.
Even though it yet again leaves us bereft of an open source mobile phone. I'm starting to think that's deliberate too.
Again, apply Hanlon's Razor. It's probably because everyone else who tried made stupid mistakes, which is the same reason MS became dominant on the desktop ages ago: their competitors were idiots. This reminds me of another adage: "When hiking, if you're attacked by a bear, you don't have to outrun the bear. You just have to outrun the slowest hiker in your group."
I have yet to see any sane person to voluntarily choose GNOME for anything; this includes distributions.
I have to disagree with this. Your criticism of Debian's selection process aside, that is a large project with many members, not just a single dictator, and they collectively made that decision. Canonical recently switched back to Gnome3. Most distros feature it as their main DE, and either half-ass or completely ignore anything else.
Why it's like this, I don't really know, but it shows that typical Linux distros are not really OSes meant for "hackers" or technical people, as GNOME 3 is specifically designed for beginners with a philosophy of complete minimalism and a complete lack of configurability. Any time I'm reading discussions by actual Linux users, Gnome3 is indeed the most popular choice, and when asked about KDE, most Linux users whine that "I don't want to have to mess around with configuration menus!"
Yes, you're right, Gnome beats even Win8 Metro in obstructing the simplest tasks, but most Linux users have drunk the kool-aid and have happily adopted it anyway, somehow rationalizing their choice.
I do expect Purism to settle on Gnome3 for this phone, and for it to be a clunky, slow monstrosity.
It's quite clearly a product for a niche audience. Like desktop Linux. There's nothing wrong with that if you can find enough customers within that niche,... even companies with the resources of MS and Canonical couldn't crack the market; smaller companies like Purism really have their work cut out for them.
I'm not very optimistic about Purism, but comparisons to MS I think are problematic. MS had some big problems with their efforts: 1) the biggest is that their reputation pretty much sucks, and their brand has negative value. It's like trying to sell cars with the "Oldsmobile" moniker, only probably worse. 2) the UI on their phones was horribly ugly, and a departure from what people were used to with iOS/Android. 3) They didn't have much app support, and couldn't get devs to make apps for their phones. A comparison to Canonical is much more relevant.
Purism won't have problem #1, as they're an unknown without a bad reputation. #2 is questionable: if they choose/push Gnome, it might not be ugly per se but it's not going to work very well, and personally I wouldn't buy one because I want to use a phone that lets me configure it somewhat instead of assuming I'm an idiot and refusing to allow any configuration, which is the entire philosophy of GNOME. If they go with KDE, it should work well; KDE has done significant work on a mobile-optimized UI before. #3 of course really is a problem (for anyone trying to enter the market); perhaps they can get their OS to run Android apps though, the way Blackberry does.
I don't see the problem in this photo. Standing in line is a complete waste of time, but there's not really a feasible way around it at this time because of the way businesses like that are operated, so if you want to eat there during the peak times, you have to stand in line. Is it really somehow more "noble" to just stand there doing nothing but staring at everyone else in line and tapping your feet, or to do something at least a little more productive or interesting, like communicating with your friends or parents, playing a simple game, reading something online, etc.?
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I have a better plan:
1) ban old vehicles. Sorry, no exemptions for "classics" (esp. not garbage cars from the 70s-80s). Put them in a museum where they belong (private museums are ok). If you really want to drive a historic car, you can transplant a newer engine into it.
1a) compromise: keep the old-car exemption, but increase the cut-off date. 80s cars are not "classics", nor the ugly cars from the 70s.
2) ban 2-cycle engines, typically used in portable lawn equipment (trimmers/edgers, leafblowers). These spew an incredible amount of nasty emissions. The weedwacker makers can make 4-cycle engines instead; anyone too weak to handle the heavier equipment can either hire someone, or convert their lawn to xeriscaping (sp?). To facilitate this, make a state law banning stupid HOAs and other localities from requiring green lawns.
3) pass a law greatly tightening the emissions standards for 4-cycle lawn equipment and boat engines. Lawnmowers are typically 4-cycle, but they're still nasty polluters with engine tech that hasn't changed since the 50s. Microcontrollers are dirt cheap these days, so there's no excuse for them to not use fuel injection, especially on the larger engines like on riding mowers. They don't even need to use the latest GDI technology, just something equivalent to the simplistic EFI cars had in the 80s, and there'll be a big improvement in emissions and fuel economy too.
4) Enact some kind of incentives to move to electric motors for lawn equipment. They already have electric mowers (push and riding); they need to push those more somehow. Stricter emissions regulations would probably make it so the lawnmower makers just give up on gas engines altogether since the electric tech is already here.
5) Pass some kind of legislation to push lithium battery recycling. Right now, lead-acid batteries have an astoundingly high recycling rate; you can take them to any auto parts store, and any place that sells and replaces them for you also recycles them. There's places to take lithium batteries, but it probably needs some more publicity or something. I'm really sick of hearing anti-electric-car idiots talk about the "environmental issues" of lithium, as if these batteries would just tossed in the trash when they get old. For cars, that wouldn't be a problem for the same reason it isn't a problem for lead-acid starting batteries, but for lawn equipment, portable electronics, etc., they need to make sure these things are being recycled safely and properly and not just landfilled, or sent to some 3rd-world country to cause a mess there with shoddy recycling.
6) As for cars, 10 years is too soon for many reasons. Instead, push for a combination of more EVs and more hybrids. I'd say that requiring all cars and trucks to at least be hybrids in 10 years is doable; the tech has been out for quite some time now. A lot of emissions and poor fuel economy are caused by all the stopping and starting in city driving, and hybrids are a big help here. There's even pretty low-cost hybrid systems available that some automakers use; they don't perform as well as the Prius system, but they cost a lot less, and do help economy a decent amount.
As your own link shows, Netflix has gone to some lengths to block customers who use VPN services to get around their geo-blocks.
This isn't a problem for me: I canceled my Netflix subscription. I suggest everyone else disappointed with Netflix's service do the same. You can get all the content you really need on BT.
Also the politicians either stay completely clueless regarding the subject or the bribes are just raising. Otherwise it's unexplainable why the lobbyists aren't simply ignored when they start the same debate after they've lost it previously. In my opinion politicians supporting such crap should be constantly hammered with accusations of corruptness until they leave politics.
The problem is the voters: the voters are supposed to see that these representatives aren't working for them, and vote them out. They don't do that, so they just wait until the small minority of activists aren't paying attention so they can push the legislation through.
Ultimately, the blame lies with the voters.
I was just trying to explain what I thought his basis was, not defend it. You're right: you can't just look at the exchange rate and say that sums up all the differences; it's a lot more complicated than that.
He's saying that the currency exchange rates make it feasible to export more. Typically, a weaker currency is good for industries that export more, because it makes their goods cheaper on the world market; a strong currency is the opposite, and is good for consumers because they can buy more stuff. Weak currency is good for exporters, but it's bad for their workers because they can't buy as much imported stuff, and taking foreign vacations is expensive for them. Strong currency is bad for exporters, and generally good for workers because they can buy more imported stuff, and enjoy foreign vacations where their currency is more valuable than the local currency, but the downside is that their job is in peril if they're in an exporting industry because they're not competitive with countries with weaker currencies.
The bottom line though is that the currency strength is largely under the control of the government, so if they don't like it that countries with weaker currencies are making stuff cheaper just because of the exchange rate, then they're free to weaken their currency if they want to compete. But as shown above, weaker currency has its downsides. Also, things are relative; a weaker currency doesn't make foreign labor magically cheaper: they're still going to gauge their pay based on not just their currency, but other currencies too (because if their currency devalues and suddenly most things get more expensive, due to how ubiquitous foreign trade is, they're going to demand higher pay to compensate). And components and raw materials imported from other places are not affected by the local currency price.
I don't see the problem with that. The US has traditionally supported its oil and corn industries with aggressive subsidies too.
Yep, and these local politicians are the responsibility of the idiots living in these places. Why should they get a subsidy from all the other Verizon customers nationwide? It's amazing how red-state voters think they're always entitled to a handout, but somehow never see it as such, but then bitch about other people receiving "welfare".
maids and cleaning services tend to have staff security checked and a consistent set of workers.
You should use "and/or" here. A lot of people hire maids on Craigslist and pay cash; I've done this in the past. But the key word here is "consistent": when you hire some individual who works for themselves, you're going to get that same person every week, not some new random person you've never met. You'll probably meet that person several times, and get to know them a bit at least. It's not like a delivery service where you can have an entirely different person for every delivery.
Instead of kicking customers out, expand your own network. In fact, do that everywhere instead of punishing people for using it.
There's not enough density in these areas to justify the expense. If you want companies to service unprofitable areas at reasonable prices, you need strong government regulation to make that happen, the way they do in Europe where even in the rural areas like northern Finland they have good coverage, while typical cellular bills are much lower than here in the US. But the rural dwellers here in the US are staunchly opposed to government regulation, so I really don't see the problem here. They're getting exactly what they voted for.
And who do you vote for in the elections? I don't know about you specifically, but all your neighbors vote overwhemingly for the GOP, and one of the biggest parts of the GOP platform is "small government", which means as little regulation as possible, and they've been big-business friendly as long as I've been alive. So maybe you're an exception, but collectively, you rural dwellers are getting exactly what you voted for.
Our government has failed us. More specifically, the FCC. ... Ajit Pai is the biggest stinking pile of shit to ever work in our government.
Ajit Pai was appointed by Trump. If you voted for Trump, you have no cause to complain. If you didn't, you should be sure to point this out to your dumb neighbors if they complain. I'm sure the vast majority of them voted for him. I'm sorry, I just don't have much sympathy for a group of people who constantly vote against their own best interests.
Here we have a big corporation taking advantage of people with no other options so they can make more money.
Didn't you read the summary? They have other options: there's local companies they can buy service from, the companies that actually own the towers they're using. Don't give me this "no other options" bullshit. They just don't want to use the small local companies because they cost a lot more and don't have unlimited data.
Companies can't be held to something they advertised decades ago; there's limits. If Verizon has honored their contracts, then they're free to refuse service to these people. They're under no obligation to keep providing them service forever.
Fuck that. I say let Verizon kick these idiots off and maintain their profits. If these people want service, they can buy it from the local carrier and pay high per-GB charges for it.
What you're talking about is government regulation, and that's absolutely the wrong thing here. The people who are affected by this are rural: they all vote for the GOP, the party which is steadfastly against regulation. These same people, I'm sure, have used a bunch of that bandwidth to write idiotic conservative messages on message boards and Facebook talking about how bad regulation is, how we need "small government", etc. Well, let's give them small government!! If they want service, they can get it from the local monopoly and pay through the nose for it, and enjoy the benefits of "small government".
So no, I'm sorry. I have no trouble with what Verizon is doing here.
Sure, go ahead and chop down that tower. It won't hurt Verizon; it's not their tower. It belongs to some other (more local) company, that Verizon was working with to allow roaming.
I think they *should* chop down the tower, because that means they won't have *any* cellular service now, not even from their overpriced local company, and they may even drive that company out of business so they'll never get any service. Sounds good to me. Fuck 'em. They brought this on themselves.
Did the advertising promise them the same rate forever? Somehow I doubt it. Surely Verizon has honored their end of the bargain for the contracted terms, and now wants to simply not renew the contracts. I don't see why they shouldn't have that right.
If I contract to sell you my service for $X/month for the next two years, and after two years I realize I'm losing money on the deal badly, why should I have to extend your contract?
Besides, Verizon is a private company and can do whatever they want, as long as they don't violate the law or break a contract. If you want more interference in their operations, now you're talking about governmental regulation. We shouldn't have any of that here. These people are rural dwellers, which means they're all GOP voters, and a big part of the GOP party platform is to reduce or eliminate regulation wherever possible, and to let companies like Verizon do what they want for maximum profitability. Let these people be hoist by their own petard.
Stupid and shortsighted. Protect a few manufacturing job at companies that can't compete
An import factor here is: who are they competing against? TFS says they can't compete against "cheap" panels from Mexico, China, and *South Korea*. South Korea is NOT a low-cost locale. It's not as expensive for labor as Japan, but it's not cheap either; labor there is surely more expensive than someplace like Alabama. If we can't compete against South Korea on something, that means we're just incompetent, and should throw in the towel.
I guess I didn't explain it well enough before: it's the utter domination of Linux by Gnome that I see as harmful, combined with the fact that I *do* find it all that terrible. I think it's a bloated, buggy, half-assed piece of crap that espouses minimalism on an OS where that shouldn't be needed (if you want minimalism, go buy a Mac; Linux is supposed to be an OS for hackers). Worst of all, customization is completely antithetical to the Gnome worldview: some disagree, and they try to make extensions (which Gnome supporters are always pointing to when people complain), but the extensions break every time they make a new release. The entire philosophy of Gnome I find to be repugnant. Their devs have a holier-than-thou attitude that they're experts in UI design, but they can't even make a file picker that shows thumbnails like every other OS and DE out there. But despite the extreme minimalism, the thing is the biggest RAM hog of all DEs, and according to most reports I've read, is noticeably slower than KDE, which people deride as the kitchen-sink DE. Now if Gnome were just one of many options, I wouldn't give two shits about it, just like I don't pay any attention to Enlightenment. But it's not; it utterly dominates the Linux landscape and is considered the standard DE, with all the large distros pushing it hard. Any distros that don't use Gnome are considered insignificant or deviants.
There's also the issue that I think Gtk is a giant turd of a toolkit. I've looked at it, and I have worked significantly with Qt, and Qt is a dream to do GUI development in. Gtk is a nightmare. And there's the issue of API stability: I know of professional projects that have moved from Gtk to Qt specifically because Gtk is so unstable, and keeps deprecating things that non-Gnome users rely on. That doesn't really happen with Qt.
I use LXDE, so I presume I have bad taste. I don't even do it for the low resource usage, I do it because I like the features and the way it looks. It's pretty easy to customize and rather stable.
That's great, and that's something you don't get with Gnome: easy customization, since they hate that. But are you really using LXDE, or the newer LXQt? From what I've read, LXDE is deprecated now as they've moved to Qt.
So, I use it. It also affords me easy entry into the Ubuntu ecosystem and their resources are vast and easily discoverable.
Personally I use Mint KDE, so I have that some "easy entry", but I also feel like a 3rd-class citizen. I'm glad Mint has a KDE variant and puts some work into it, and I'm glad Mint is around at all (all their variants are things that Ubuntu didn't want to bother with after all; the entire Mint distro is a reaction to Ubuntu), but I can't help but feel that Linux would be better off if they weren't constantly re-inventing the wheel, but there's a good reason they do when all the main distros pick and push such a terrible DE for what appear to be entirely political purposes. I actually liked it better when Ubuntu was doing Unity, because at least that kept some of the focus off Gnome, but now for some dumb reason they went to Gnome when it became apparent their Unity strategy wasn't panning out; it would have been much, much easier for them to go with KDE and then make their own custom version of it using the design concepts from Unity.
Finally, I'll end with a car analogy. Instead of today's landscape where there's roughly a dozen major manufacturers (Ford, GM, Chrysler, Honda, Toyota, Subaru, Mazda, BMW, VW, Mercedes, Volvo, Hyundai) and a bunch of minor ones (it's arguable which are major or minor), suppose for some reason things changed so that there was only one major manufacturer, Ford, and everyone else became a small, bit player. Parts for Fords would be ubiquitous and cheap, and it'd be easy to get them serviced, but buying any other car would be a big PITA, with service hard to find, parts hard to find and expensive, etc. Even getting your car registered with the DMV would be a pain because they'd act
I want something I can configure to be the way I want. No, I will not use extensions; extensions break every time they release a new version; that's very well-documented. I've used Gnome3. It's a complete piece of shit.
Yeah, I do agree that KDE seems to be stretched too thin, and this was especially a problem in the 4.x cycle with all the crap they tried to throw in there. But in our ideal universe where Gnome dies, I think KDE would get some more developer time which would help with the quality and stability problems.
Gnome delenda est.
I'm not a big fan of Cinnamon either. I'd rather see KDE take over as the primary DE for Linux. But I think it'd be healthiest for the Linux ecosystem for Gnome to completely die, and all the alternatives to increase their share of the space, so that any incoming user has several very viable alternatives to choose from, rather than one that gets all the glory (undeservedly), while all the others seem to barely be afterthoughts and generally get poo-pooed.
Competition is fine. Domination by something sub-standard is not. That's why Gnome is harmful to Linux. I can't even recommend Linux in good conscience to anyone without being extremely specific about which sub-distro they should use, because if they pick a standard distro running Gnome, they're going to have an awful experience because Gnome is such a piece of shit and such a large departure from what they're used to.
Either they're really that stupid, or they have an agenda
"Never ascribe to malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetence".
I think it's most likely they really are that stupid.
Even though it yet again leaves us bereft of an open source mobile phone. I'm starting to think that's deliberate too.
Again, apply Hanlon's Razor. It's probably because everyone else who tried made stupid mistakes, which is the same reason MS became dominant on the desktop ages ago: their competitors were idiots. This reminds me of another adage: "When hiking, if you're attacked by a bear, you don't have to outrun the bear. You just have to outrun the slowest hiker in your group."
I have yet to see any sane person to voluntarily choose GNOME for anything; this includes distributions.
I have to disagree with this. Your criticism of Debian's selection process aside, that is a large project with many members, not just a single dictator, and they collectively made that decision. Canonical recently switched back to Gnome3. Most distros feature it as their main DE, and either half-ass or completely ignore anything else.
Why it's like this, I don't really know, but it shows that typical Linux distros are not really OSes meant for "hackers" or technical people, as GNOME 3 is specifically designed for beginners with a philosophy of complete minimalism and a complete lack of configurability. Any time I'm reading discussions by actual Linux users, Gnome3 is indeed the most popular choice, and when asked about KDE, most Linux users whine that "I don't want to have to mess around with configuration menus!"
Yes, you're right, Gnome beats even Win8 Metro in obstructing the simplest tasks, but most Linux users have drunk the kool-aid and have happily adopted it anyway, somehow rationalizing their choice.
I do expect Purism to settle on Gnome3 for this phone, and for it to be a clunky, slow monstrosity.
It's quite clearly a product for a niche audience. Like desktop Linux. There's nothing wrong with that if you can find enough customers within that niche, ... even companies with the resources of MS and Canonical couldn't crack the market; smaller companies like Purism really have their work cut out for them.
I'm not very optimistic about Purism, but comparisons to MS I think are problematic. MS had some big problems with their efforts: 1) the biggest is that their reputation pretty much sucks, and their brand has negative value. It's like trying to sell cars with the "Oldsmobile" moniker, only probably worse. 2) the UI on their phones was horribly ugly, and a departure from what people were used to with iOS/Android. 3) They didn't have much app support, and couldn't get devs to make apps for their phones. A comparison to Canonical is much more relevant.
Purism won't have problem #1, as they're an unknown without a bad reputation. #2 is questionable: if they choose/push Gnome, it might not be ugly per se but it's not going to work very well, and personally I wouldn't buy one because I want to use a phone that lets me configure it somewhat instead of assuming I'm an idiot and refusing to allow any configuration, which is the entire philosophy of GNOME. If they go with KDE, it should work well; KDE has done significant work on a mobile-optimized UI before. #3 of course really is a problem (for anyone trying to enter the market); perhaps they can get their OS to run Android apps though, the way Blackberry does.
I don't see the problem in this photo. Standing in line is a complete waste of time, but there's not really a feasible way around it at this time because of the way businesses like that are operated, so if you want to eat there during the peak times, you have to stand in line. Is it really somehow more "noble" to just stand there doing nothing but staring at everyone else in line and tapping your feet, or to do something at least a little more productive or interesting, like communicating with your friends or parents, playing a simple game, reading something online, etc.?