I have to strongly disagree, because basically what you're saying is that we should expect less quality and more bugs in OSS products. That seems to contradict a lot of what we hear about the benefits of OSS.
You're actually arguing for commercial software by saying it is higher quality since it is funded by consumers. I'd rather pay for something if it's going to be higher quality than the free alternative. I'm concerned with the end result, not the ideology or means used to get there, and that means using the right tool for the job.
The thing about that "SUBSET" is that it seems to be a lot more visible and a lot more highly moderated. In fact, go and read an ASP article. The threads are endless in their criticism, and a lot of them are "+5 Funny" Microsoft jokes from 1998. Then you go and compare to articles on OSS vulnerabilities like this one, where the discussion is practical and serious with only a few scattered jokes.
I mean, if you're actually arguing that Slashdot has a balanced readership when it comes to Microsoft technologies, then clearly you read this website less often than the editors do!:)
Actually, it was mostly due to aggressive testing, the same way people find Microsoft holes.
I don't think the "many eyes" situation occurs as often as we're told on Slashdot. People aren't just sitting there at their laptop reading line after line of code like a book. If it was true, Firefox wouldn't have all the vulnerabilities it has, which are always found through exploits, not people sitting there reading nothing but the C++ code in their spare time.
Wow. It's hard to argue with that kind of research. Especially your well thought-out criticisms such as "brain-dead Bush supporter" (I voted for Nader).
I haven't seen anybody arguing that global changes in climate aren't occuring. The arguments come about the actual cause of it, which have been found to correlate with several external factors, like the solar cycle.
It's definitely not proven that we're causing anything. Many scientists argue that it's a natural cycle. I've never understood why so many people, including Slashdotters, are so quick to accept absolutely everything that comes out of environmentalists' mouths. But then they start bashing George W. Bush, and then I see why--the issue is now a political issue, not a rational one based on actual facts.
Nevertheless, these are the kinds of things you have to consider in an effective ad. Relating to people as "people" and not "users" makes a slight difference in presentation. Actually, it's one of the real problems underlying the desktop portion of OSS as a whole.
People are used to reading a certain formal language in an advertisement. Yes, it's a subtle difference, but if I had a choice I would have switched terms.
Anyone who doesn't understand 'user' probably doesn't understand any of the concepts involved.
I thought the purpose of the ad was to get the most mainstream attention possible? Why limit your audience?
Actually, it is still 90+ of the market. In fact, Google's Zeitgeist numbers showed no change in usage. I realize Slashdot has posted some screaming headlines in the past based on the server logs of a few technical websites which had a Firefox jump (the server logs of a web design site somehow became "Firefox Gains On IE"), but that's to be expected and is not reflective of the majority of users on the web.
It's going to take a lot of time for any transition to occur. It will not happen overnight, and not even in a year. IE is simply too established and many users are happy with it.
There are quite a few marketing negatives that go along with the word "Free," especially for software, such as "lack of quality," "unsupported," and "spyware-laden." The ad gives it the importance it deserves.
Can you prove this?
The image presented by Firefox depends on the quality of the marketing. The ad could have easily marketed the fact that it is free in a rational manner that lets people know it's been in development for years ("years in the making") and is free ("available for download at no charge").
AOL used "free" to describe their install CDs. The service costs money but the software is free, and millions of people installed it or downloaded it. They even gave free month trials. Free works.
I've never heard any marketing person actually argue that something being "free" is a marketing negative! Incredible.
Not so. It is used pretty well here, actually. First, it establishes that this is a real product. Second, it establishes that it's a new product, which underscores the marketing message of opting away from something stagnant and old for something fresh and new.
The fact that an ad is being introduced is enough to establish that it's a "real product." The 1.0 number is meaningless to most people, and only those who have been following the browser since the beta days will attach any relevance to it.
There are endless ways to convey that something is new and fresh and represents moving away from stagnation better than a giant decimal number that most people won't attach significance to. This is a case of geeks assuming people even realize what the number "1.0" represents. In fact, a lot of people will assume Firefox is not as good as IE as a result--IE is at version 6. 6 > 1.0. IE then appears more established.
Now you're just showing ignorance. Marketing has specific, limited objectives. In this case, it's prompting the set of readers who are sick of IE but don't know about alternatives to get interested and check out the web site. That's all.
How are they supposed to check out the alternatives if they don't know what makes it different? Most IE users aren't sick of IE because they don't know any better. They think pop-ups are a normal aspect of the web. It is an egregious mistake to neglect to mention the main selling points of Firefox, the only reason the majority of users initially switched in the first place.
Cramming the page with browser features does not support the objective. And by the way, "boring" testimonials are highly effective marketing tools.
Nothing's boring if you market it right. Mentioning that Firefox won't irritate you with pop-ups is something people can relate to and wish for. People don't trust testimonials as much today because they appear paid-for.
That (potential) still isn't a good reason. How about it be based on what actually happened?
And what happened was gaining access to people's credit cards, a very serious crime with potential consequences had they succeeded in their goals.
It is absurd to give a sentence for an attempted financial crime that is greater than many violent crimes.
Why? I haven't heard a real explanation of this. Sentences vary based on the crime, the state, the judge, and so on. I notice you don't acknowledge that this guy was a repeat offender, which also contributed. There are cases where massive car theft or drug selling have landed sentences higher than those that same judge has given rapists and murderers in some instances. That is because each case is different and deserves evaluation of its given circumstances, not some absolutist code that is rigid and inflexible and does not allow for varying degrees of severity to better reflect the deserved punishment for the crime based on those circumstances. In this case, circumstances warranted a nine year sentence (which probably won't be served fully anyway).
Failure is "rewarded" for other crimes. For instance, attempted murder has a lesser sentence than murder.
It depends on the case. And again, this was a repeat offender who didn't seem to get the idea that trying to ruin people's lives is wrong. Like it or not, money is important to people in a capitalist system, and you could ruin many lives.
This sentence is being used as a deterrent. It won't work.
Can you prove this?
I doubt criminals are going to think about how long they will go to prison if they get caught-they don't expect to.
Enforcing a strict code of punishment for severe crimes serves to create a moral consciousness in society that helps determine what is right and wrong, and also how right and how wrong certain actions are. For instance, you know murder is worse than shoplifting a can of tuna, because murder can get you sentence to death but a can of tuna will get you a fine and maybe a night in jail if the store manager demands it.
It is merely a PR event for the prosecution and police-hey look, we are doing something about these dangerous hackers, now go away, we need to get back to our coffee and donuts....
When someone resorts to stereotyping and sticking words in people's mouths, projecting their own biases onto the situation rather than discussing the facts, you know that their position is faulty.
"The interceptor missile did not shut down because of some malfunction, it was shut down intentionally because of inability to monitor performance of a boost stage rocket detected during pre-launch system checks. The boost stage might have been set to work properly or it might not have, but a test of this magnitude and expense demands ability to monitor all mission critical systems so that all necessary data is available for post-mission review. When it became clear that this would not be the case, the mission was scrubbed, not failed.
Unfortunately, a very expensive target drone was lost, and somebody is presently being chewed out because of that. But the kill vehicle and its delivery system remain intact for future use, and by far most of the test hardware funds were expended there. As for schedule delay, expect this test to be rescheduled as soon as a replacement target is ready."
Attempting to steal credit cards electronically (and failing) is worse than robbing a bank?
Failure doesn't lessen the crime. Attempted rape and attempted murder can be as severe as their successful counterparts.
By what value system are you making this judgement?
The value system in which stealing money in a bank and stealing money via people's own credit cards are both bad.
The reason sentences are so high on computer crimes is because of the potential severity of the crime and the widespread damages that can be caused when you're not limited to the "meatspace" of a single bank.
Google wasn't selling a product using someone else's trademarks. It was for use of user search term keywords. Get back to me when Google's Ads are called "GEICO Google Ads."
You may as well say Google isn't allowed to let people search for the term "Pepsi" if it returns some Coca-Cola search results.
Could this be the start of a trend in which news moves at the pace of slashdot?
For that to happen, time itself would have to glitch and repeat, like a repost. Also, there would be mysterious changes in reality as time posted an update to itself to let people know the story was actually false or misreported or was a hoax.
Why shouldn't Google be able to determine how their own advertising system works? I'm tired of people thinking that companies can't do what they want with their own products, just because you don't like how they do it.
I appreciate the author's point in writing this app, but from what I can tell, companies aren't trying to shut down the applications as much as they are going after the individual downloaders and servers that use those applications to trade files illegally. This is what people were recommending these companies do during the Napster trial--don't shut down the whole thing, shut down those individuals doing the infringing.
P2P should always have a place as an excellent distribution method for valid files. The best the copyright holders can do is just watch for their files to appear on these networks and take action. The networks aren't going to enforce themselves, and it doesn't seem like P2P authors are all that interested in implementing enforcement mechanisms (see past comments by Bittorrent's author). It's up to the companies to do it.
A more important issue is, what happened to freedom? If people want to port OSS to Windows, they should be able to. Otherwise, OSS isn't truly free. Free as in speech.
This weird personal vitriol people have for media corporations is silly, especially considering how much you guys shell out for movies like The Matrix and Lord of the Rings. Those movies get made because people get paid for their work.
It's not that they dream of a day when nobody owns physical media. In fact, it would seem to me it's the downloaders who want a physical media free world. The MPAA/RIAA are the ones who have been pushing physical media up until now, until people came along ripping everything and putting them online so people could download them without having to pay for them in a store.
People have gotten so used to the convenience of downloading that they've created an entire justification mindset to avoid admitting what they're doing is technically wrong. It's like a life necessity to people now. Read what you wrote. "If I can't find what I want, I'm going to download it instead!" It's not like it's food and water. If you can't find it, or don't like the price of it, then you don't get it. "And if I like it, I'll buy it!" It's not up to you to choose how content holders advertise their products. Why is it so hard to respect the desires of copyright holders, the ones making all that content you want so dearly?
In a world where nobody gets paid for what they make, there's no incentive to make them except by small pockets of people. And we've seen what happens in such a system in the OSS world, where we wait ten years for a usable desktop that compares to commercial rivals and are still waiting. That basic idea has been lost in a "This is a culture movement against the 'evil' RIAA!" Nobody really explains what's so evil about them except for corporation-bashing (I saw somebody say the perennial favorite "faceless conglomorate" in another discussion). It's a groupthink issue.
All the moral justifications people give are meaningless and fall apart on examination. What it really all boils down to is people getting mad when the free ride is taken away. When you bash the "boards of the media," you're really trying to paint them as the guys doing wrong in your mind, because you know that it's really you doing wrong by getting something without paying for it. In a retail store, that's called shoplifting. The store manager doesn't arrest you because you're taking something that belongs to him, he's arresting you because you're taking away from his profits. The same with this.
Am I saying I've never pirated music? Hell yeah, I have. I don't anymore though because I want the real thing. But I admit what I did was wrong, that I was a thief, a pirate, etc. I don't sit here and invent some sort of complicated belief system to justify what amounts to lifting something to avoid paying for it. That's all this issue really is--people wanting to protect piracy so they can continue getting things for free. The reason these companies are cracking on it so hard on individual downloaders (like Slashdotters suggested they do back in 2000, remember, during the Napster trial) is because they're trying to combat a movement of uncontrolled and growing bandwidth. Eventually, everyone will have high speed connections. Why go to the store and buy the DVD when Bittorrent can give it to you for free in a matter of hours? In avoiding admitting their basic human impulses of wanting to get stuff for free, pirates instead invent bad guys like the RIAA and play victim.
I also think Slashdot has become such a pro-piracy advocate because young people new to OSS think that because they can get the GIMP for free, those same principles apply to commercial software, and they think they should get everything else for free too and don't see why they shouldn't. They're confusing free as in "speech" with free as in "loader."
And yet those centuries of plain paper you talk about exist in a 3D world, often filed in a 3D file cabinet, sitting in 3D shelves arranged in aisles three-dimensionally.
In every single 3D GUI article, we get the non-visionary types who chime in with "Why do this?" That attitude is the antithesis of progress. May as well stay with the command prompt forever ("Why go graphical?").
I don't know, I still find myself way more productive with a tactile interface such as papers and folders on a desk, rather than pointing-and-clicking little hitboxes to do what I need to get done. I'd love to be able to physically drag over a bunch of files, quickly move them over by dragging my finger, and so on. Using a mouse (a middleman between me and the system) really, really sucks and also hurts my wrist.
You move more when turning pages in a book, yet I still think it's the superior interface to a scrolling PDF file.
Slashdot Mirror
...but when are they going to just go full-on GTK# running on a Mono framework? :D
.NET game.
Beat Microsoft at its own
I have to strongly disagree, because basically what you're saying is that we should expect less quality and more bugs in OSS products. That seems to contradict a lot of what we hear about the benefits of OSS.
You're actually arguing for commercial software by saying it is higher quality since it is funded by consumers. I'd rather pay for something if it's going to be higher quality than the free alternative. I'm concerned with the end result, not the ideology or means used to get there, and that means using the right tool for the job.
The thing about that "SUBSET" is that it seems to be a lot more visible and a lot more highly moderated. In fact, go and read an ASP article. The threads are endless in their criticism, and a lot of them are "+5 Funny" Microsoft jokes from 1998. Then you go and compare to articles on OSS vulnerabilities like this one, where the discussion is practical and serious with only a few scattered jokes.
:)
I mean, if you're actually arguing that Slashdot has a balanced readership when it comes to Microsoft technologies, then clearly you read this website less often than the editors do!
Actually, it was mostly due to aggressive testing, the same way people find Microsoft holes.
I don't think the "many eyes" situation occurs as often as we're told on Slashdot. People aren't just sitting there at their laptop reading line after line of code like a book. If it was true, Firefox wouldn't have all the vulnerabilities it has, which are always found through exploits, not people sitting there reading nothing but the C++ code in their spare time.
If these had been vulnerabilities in ASP.NET, everyone would suddenly be a lot more vocal and have something to say.
At least one high-rated comment would be wondering why anyone would use ASP.NET when we have languages like PHP.
Wow. It's hard to argue with that kind of research. Especially your well thought-out criticisms such as "brain-dead Bush supporter" (I voted for Nader).
Robots. Tiny, round robots that brew coffee in their chests while teaching you Japanese. Get them started in on the culture early.
I haven't seen anybody arguing that global changes in climate aren't occuring. The arguments come about the actual cause of it, which have been found to correlate with several external factors, like the solar cycle.
Study by Swiss and German scientists shows Earth is getting warmer because Sun is burning brighter
"Global Warming Bomshell"
Global warming or lack thereof
The Real Cost of Global Warming
It's definitely not proven that we're causing anything. Many scientists argue that it's a natural cycle. I've never understood why so many people, including Slashdotters, are so quick to accept absolutely everything that comes out of environmentalists' mouths. But then they start bashing George W. Bush, and then I see why--the issue is now a political issue, not a rational one based on actual facts.
Nevertheless, these are the kinds of things you have to consider in an effective ad. Relating to people as "people" and not "users" makes a slight difference in presentation. Actually, it's one of the real problems underlying the desktop portion of OSS as a whole.
People are used to reading a certain formal language in an advertisement. Yes, it's a subtle difference, but if I had a choice I would have switched terms.
Anyone who doesn't understand 'user' probably doesn't understand any of the concepts involved.
I thought the purpose of the ad was to get the most mainstream attention possible? Why limit your audience?
Actually, it is still 90+ of the market. In fact, Google's Zeitgeist numbers showed no change in usage. I realize Slashdot has posted some screaming headlines in the past based on the server logs of a few technical websites which had a Firefox jump (the server logs of a web design site somehow became "Firefox Gains On IE"), but that's to be expected and is not reflective of the majority of users on the web.
It's going to take a lot of time for any transition to occur. It will not happen overnight, and not even in a year. IE is simply too established and many users are happy with it.
There are quite a few marketing negatives that go along with the word "Free," especially for software, such as "lack of quality," "unsupported," and "spyware-laden." The ad gives it the importance it deserves.
:)
Can you prove this?
The image presented by Firefox depends on the quality of the marketing. The ad could have easily marketed the fact that it is free in a rational manner that lets people know it's been in development for years ("years in the making") and is free ("available for download at no charge").
AOL used "free" to describe their install CDs. The service costs money but the software is free, and millions of people installed it or downloaded it. They even gave free month trials. Free works.
I've never heard any marketing person actually argue that something being "free" is a marketing negative! Incredible.
Not so. It is used pretty well here, actually. First, it establishes that this is a real product. Second, it establishes that it's a new product, which underscores the marketing message of opting away from something stagnant and old for something fresh and new.
The fact that an ad is being introduced is enough to establish that it's a "real product." The 1.0 number is meaningless to most people, and only those who have been following the browser since the beta days will attach any relevance to it.
There are endless ways to convey that something is new and fresh and represents moving away from stagnation better than a giant decimal number that most people won't attach significance to. This is a case of geeks assuming people even realize what the number "1.0" represents. In fact, a lot of people will assume Firefox is not as good as IE as a result--IE is at version 6. 6 > 1.0. IE then appears more established.
Now you're just showing ignorance. Marketing has specific, limited objectives. In this case, it's prompting the set of readers who are sick of IE but don't know about alternatives to get interested and check out the web site. That's all.
How are they supposed to check out the alternatives if they don't know what makes it different? Most IE users aren't sick of IE because they don't know any better. They think pop-ups are a normal aspect of the web. It is an egregious mistake to neglect to mention the main selling points of Firefox, the only reason the majority of users initially switched in the first place.
Cramming the page with browser features does not support the objective. And by the way, "boring" testimonials are highly effective marketing tools.
Nothing's boring if you market it right. Mentioning that Firefox won't irritate you with pop-ups is something people can relate to and wish for. People don't trust testimonials as much today because they appear paid-for.
I'm glad you're not doing marketing for me.
That (potential) still isn't a good reason. How about it be based on what actually happened?
And what happened was gaining access to people's credit cards, a very serious crime with potential consequences had they succeeded in their goals.
It is absurd to give a sentence for an attempted financial crime that is greater than many violent crimes.
Why? I haven't heard a real explanation of this. Sentences vary based on the crime, the state, the judge, and so on. I notice you don't acknowledge that this guy was a repeat offender, which also contributed. There are cases where massive car theft or drug selling have landed sentences higher than those that same judge has given rapists and murderers in some instances. That is because each case is different and deserves evaluation of its given circumstances, not some absolutist code that is rigid and inflexible and does not allow for varying degrees of severity to better reflect the deserved punishment for the crime based on those circumstances. In this case, circumstances warranted a nine year sentence (which probably won't be served fully anyway).
Failure is "rewarded" for other crimes. For instance, attempted murder has a lesser sentence than murder.
It depends on the case. And again, this was a repeat offender who didn't seem to get the idea that trying to ruin people's lives is wrong. Like it or not, money is important to people in a capitalist system, and you could ruin many lives.
This sentence is being used as a deterrent. It won't work.
Can you prove this?
I doubt criminals are going to think about how long they will go to prison if they get caught-they don't expect to.
Enforcing a strict code of punishment for severe crimes serves to create a moral consciousness in society that helps determine what is right and wrong, and also how right and how wrong certain actions are. For instance, you know murder is worse than shoplifting a can of tuna, because murder can get you sentence to death but a can of tuna will get you a fine and maybe a night in jail if the store manager demands it.
It is merely a PR event for the prosecution and police-hey look, we are doing something about these dangerous hackers, now go away, we need to get back to our coffee and donuts....
When someone resorts to stereotyping and sticking words in people's mouths, projecting their own biases onto the situation rather than discussing the facts, you know that their position is faulty.
From Power Line:
"The interceptor missile did not shut down because of some malfunction, it was shut down intentionally because of inability to monitor performance of a boost stage rocket detected during pre-launch system checks. The boost stage might have been set to work properly or it might not have, but a test of this magnitude and expense demands ability to monitor all mission critical systems so that all necessary data is available for post-mission review. When it became clear that this would not be the case, the mission was scrubbed, not failed.
Unfortunately, a very expensive target drone was lost, and somebody is presently being chewed out because of that. But the kill vehicle and its delivery system remain intact for future use, and by far most of the test hardware funds were expended there. As for schedule delay, expect this test to be rescheduled as soon as a replacement target is ready."
9 years is pretty reasonable for breaking in and trying to steal credit card information.
Especially since the guy is a repeat offender.
Attempting to steal credit cards electronically (and failing) is worse than robbing a bank?
Failure doesn't lessen the crime. Attempted rape and attempted murder can be as severe as their successful counterparts.
By what value system are you making this judgement?
The value system in which stealing money in a bank and stealing money via people's own credit cards are both bad.
The reason sentences are so high on computer crimes is because of the potential severity of the crime and the widespread damages that can be caused when you're not limited to the "meatspace" of a single bank.
My point is that to argue against porting OSS to Windows is to argue against the ideas of the freedom behind OSS.
Google wasn't selling a product using someone else's trademarks. It was for use of user search term keywords. Get back to me when Google's Ads are called "GEICO Google Ads."
You may as well say Google isn't allowed to let people search for the term "Pepsi" if it returns some Coca-Cola search results.
In a class of 25, 44 security holes seems a bit low.
Why is that low? I found 44 security holes to be a rather alarming amount.
Could this be the start of a trend in which news moves at the pace of slashdot?
For that to happen, time itself would have to glitch and repeat, like a repost. Also, there would be mysterious changes in reality as time posted an update to itself to let people know the story was actually false or misreported or was a hoax.
Why shouldn't Google be able to determine how their own advertising system works? I'm tired of people thinking that companies can't do what they want with their own products, just because you don't like how they do it.
I appreciate the author's point in writing this app, but from what I can tell, companies aren't trying to shut down the applications as much as they are going after the individual downloaders and servers that use those applications to trade files illegally. This is what people were recommending these companies do during the Napster trial--don't shut down the whole thing, shut down those individuals doing the infringing.
P2P should always have a place as an excellent distribution method for valid files. The best the copyright holders can do is just watch for their files to appear on these networks and take action. The networks aren't going to enforce themselves, and it doesn't seem like P2P authors are all that interested in implementing enforcement mechanisms (see past comments by Bittorrent's author). It's up to the companies to do it.
A more important issue is, what happened to freedom? If people want to port OSS to Windows, they should be able to. Otherwise, OSS isn't truly free. Free as in speech.
This weird personal vitriol people have for media corporations is silly, especially considering how much you guys shell out for movies like The Matrix and Lord of the Rings. Those movies get made because people get paid for their work.
It's not that they dream of a day when nobody owns physical media. In fact, it would seem to me it's the downloaders who want a physical media free world. The MPAA/RIAA are the ones who have been pushing physical media up until now, until people came along ripping everything and putting them online so people could download them without having to pay for them in a store.
People have gotten so used to the convenience of downloading that they've created an entire justification mindset to avoid admitting what they're doing is technically wrong. It's like a life necessity to people now. Read what you wrote. "If I can't find what I want, I'm going to download it instead!" It's not like it's food and water. If you can't find it, or don't like the price of it, then you don't get it. "And if I like it, I'll buy it!" It's not up to you to choose how content holders advertise their products. Why is it so hard to respect the desires of copyright holders, the ones making all that content you want so dearly?
In a world where nobody gets paid for what they make, there's no incentive to make them except by small pockets of people. And we've seen what happens in such a system in the OSS world, where we wait ten years for a usable desktop that compares to commercial rivals and are still waiting. That basic idea has been lost in a "This is a culture movement against the 'evil' RIAA!" Nobody really explains what's so evil about them except for corporation-bashing (I saw somebody say the perennial favorite "faceless conglomorate" in another discussion). It's a groupthink issue.
All the moral justifications people give are meaningless and fall apart on examination. What it really all boils down to is people getting mad when the free ride is taken away. When you bash the "boards of the media," you're really trying to paint them as the guys doing wrong in your mind, because you know that it's really you doing wrong by getting something without paying for it. In a retail store, that's called shoplifting. The store manager doesn't arrest you because you're taking something that belongs to him, he's arresting you because you're taking away from his profits. The same with this.
Am I saying I've never pirated music? Hell yeah, I have. I don't anymore though because I want the real thing. But I admit what I did was wrong, that I was a thief, a pirate, etc. I don't sit here and invent some sort of complicated belief system to justify what amounts to lifting something to avoid paying for it. That's all this issue really is--people wanting to protect piracy so they can continue getting things for free. The reason these companies are cracking on it so hard on individual downloaders (like Slashdotters suggested they do back in 2000, remember, during the Napster trial) is because they're trying to combat a movement of uncontrolled and growing bandwidth. Eventually, everyone will have high speed connections. Why go to the store and buy the DVD when Bittorrent can give it to you for free in a matter of hours? In avoiding admitting their basic human impulses of wanting to get stuff for free, pirates instead invent bad guys like the RIAA and play victim.
I also think Slashdot has become such a pro-piracy advocate because young people new to OSS think that because they can get the GIMP for free, those same principles apply to commercial software, and they think they should get everything else for free too and don't see why they shouldn't. They're confusing free as in "speech" with free as in "loader."
And yet those centuries of plain paper you talk about exist in a 3D world, often filed in a 3D file cabinet, sitting in 3D shelves arranged in aisles three-dimensionally.
In every single 3D GUI article, we get the non-visionary types who chime in with "Why do this?" That attitude is the antithesis of progress. May as well stay with the command prompt forever ("Why go graphical?").
I don't know, I still find myself way more productive with a tactile interface such as papers and folders on a desk, rather than pointing-and-clicking little hitboxes to do what I need to get done. I'd love to be able to physically drag over a bunch of files, quickly move them over by dragging my finger, and so on. Using a mouse (a middleman between me and the system) really, really sucks and also hurts my wrist.
You move more when turning pages in a book, yet I still think it's the superior interface to a scrolling PDF file.