Firebird simply doesn't have as much linux developers. That's the thing with open source, you can't assign work to your developers. It's one thing saying "firebird needs to be optimised for linux/X", and a whole other thing to actually do it.
What I can tell you though, is that despite firebird being slower on linux than on windows, it's not noticeably slower (for me anyway). And in addition, it is a fast browser, even on linux. On windows it even whoops IE's ass in various benchmarks. A lot of people have misconceptions about firebird's rendering speed because they're used to IE's render-as-soon-as-data-arrives model of updating the screen, which starts sooner, but ends later. If you want that in firebird, type about:config and set nglayout.initialpaint.delay to 0. One more thing: I have a pII/233 that I run firebird on. It runs at a usable clip, even on such a low-end system.
And obviously, whenever a graphical application is slow, it is X's fault... NOT.
Have you read the right to read? I think rms was indeed VERY visionary in that one, since that seems to be where things in the proprietary world are evolving.
Also, I forgot to mention with respect to package dependancies. Debian has support for suggested packages. In other words, if you install a package it might suggest, but not require, that you install a certain library. Working this into a tree view would be quite the nightmare.
One would have at the top level only packages that have no dependancies. The next level would be packages that directly rely on them, and then the packeges that rely on them, and so on.
Packages dependancies are a directed graph, not a tree. In other words you might have packages A and B at the same level, and C which depends on the both of them. Where do you list it? Under A, under B, or under both? You can think up more convoluted examples easily.
Besides, I agree with other posters that the user shouldn't have to know about dependancies. The user should even have to know the app name of the app he wants. He or she should be able to browse functionality categories, get a list of the apps that provide that functionality, and on double-click have it installed with all dependancies. This would by coupled with deborphan-like functionality to track installed packages that don't provide end-user functionality (read: libraries), but have no packages depending on them (and so are safe to remove to uncruftify your system).
I used deborphan recently on a 2 year old debian system and freed up 1 gigabyte of no longer user packages. 1 whole gigabyte. My system is again as clean as it was the day I installed it. Try doing that on windows.
Keep track of all good user input in one place.
It's called the debian bug tracking system. Use it.
What would happen is that you'd distribute your software as an apt repository on cd (or from the net). The installer would simply add the cd as a source, then apt-get install yourapphere, and apt would install the dependancies from where ever it gets them, be that the net or the cd.
This is possible RIGHT NOW, within the existing apt framework. Why nobody is doing it, I don't know.
How would you combine them? Apt requires that every package on the system is registered with the dpkg database. If you're doing all-in-one installation you'd have to distribute it as a set of packages. At that point, why not just distribute the packages separately on cd-rom, and let apt take care of the heavy-lifting?
Except that the control chip does not come with a pink plastic cup holder that attaches to the outside of the driver's door and a document claiming you're only allowed to use the ignition if said pink cup holder is attached to the right location.
That's basically what these eula's are claiming. I don't see why they should be able to require that, since pink plastic cup holders have nothing whatsoever to do with ignitions, as spyware most of the time has nothing to do with the software it's bundled with.
Although to be fair, spyware is less useful than a cup holder, even if that cup holder is pink.
Nice series of straw men. First you equate lefties with communists, an unproven comparison (and one I disagree with), then you distort communism to make it seem more extremist and impersonal than it really is (or was), and then you conclude that because the right is the opposite of the left (again, not proven, and something I disagree with), they are therefore the good guys. I also love how you directly equate abortion to communism. Very innovative, for a troll.
Ofcourse, the fact that you use a enough of long sentences and big words disguises this quite thoroughly.
Actually, it's easy to find specific allegations of torture. It's also quite easy to find that the international and US courts have no control over guantanamo bay prisoners. And it's easy to find this from multiple sources. To me the very fact that the US government doesn't want courts to get involved signifies they're likely doing stuff that can not see the light of day. If there's nothing to hide, why are they hiding it?
Ofcourse, you could argue that these are all lies and hearsay, and that the US government would never ever use torture. But it is a fact that prisoners on guantanamo bay are held illegally (according to the geneva convention they should be pow's, but the US claims they aren't), and that they do not have due process rights (inalienable human right). If the US is breaking the law anyway in their detainment of these prisoners, would it be such a stretch to imagine them using torture as well?
There is such a thing as psychological torture by the way. If you're being held without accusation, without promise of release, ever (despite that the war in afghanistan is over, pow's haven't been returned or formally accused of a crime), and without even access to counsel or basically the outside world, would you feel ok? I'd feel downright miserable in such circumstances, even if they did not lay a hand on me. The geneva convention's definition of torture is "cruel and unusual treatment", which does not need to have a physical component involved.
I see no need for guantanamo bay. If the people there did something wrong, the regular US judicial system should be able to handle it. If they didn't do something wrong (and no, fighting for your country is not a crime), they should be freed. The very existance of guantanamo bay is a slap in the face of justice.
Taken to an extreme: Ford is not responsible if you use your truck to kill your neighbor. Nor should they be.
Following your argument, why don't the wireless card makers release specs then? If they're off the hook regarding using these wireless chipsets for illicit purposes, why don't they just release the specs?
From then on all flash objects will be replaced by a huge button that says "flash: click to view". And guess what, you click that button to view the flash animation!
The only problem is that some sites use idiotic flash detection scripts that break down because this doesn't even load the flash files from the network if you don't click the box.
I have two desktop machines sitting side by side. One of them is always turned on. If I want to "boost my productivity", I boot up the other one. The first one notices this, and automatically runs x2x tunneled over ssh. Presto, suddenly I have a single desktop consisting of two different physical machines. I can completely bog down one machine, and still have the other one be snappy. The downside of this setup is that you can't drag apps from one screen to the other (although copy/paste across screens does work), but in my experience that's not something you really truly miss as opposed to a dual-head setup on a single box.
You can also do this with a linux box and a windows machine with x2vnc, though I imagine tunneling over ssh becomes consideraly less obvious in that case.
Have had this setup for two years now. Works like a champ.
It's innovative! That makes everything alright. After all, if I want to rob the local 7/11 and not get a friendly visit from the men in blue all I need to do is rob it butt-naked, because that way I'm innovating the storerobbing business. Right?
First of all, what, bandwidth-wise is the difference between using Trillian, or using the official MSN, ICQ, AIM or Yahoo clients? Answer: nothing at all. If you're already using the service, switching to a different client does not make a single difference to the IM network's owners.
Secondly, the advertising argument is bogus. Every single IM network out there has officially sanctioned clients that do not display ads. Granted, these are usually for off-beat platforms (like the ad-free version of MSN for the mac), but that doesn't undo their existance. The point of an IM network is to lure people to the things you're actually charging for (like how MS uses MSN messenger to get people to use the for-pay hotmail stuff, or to get an MSN subscription). An IM network itself has no value to a user, because there are too many free alternatives. It's like with email, you don't have to pay for an email address, so almost nobody does (an address that comes with an ISP subscription doesn't count).
Finally, locking out third-party clients is probably more about control than finance. The network owners want total control over what clients access their networks, so they can dictate features (and in the case of MSN, lock out open-source). Ofcourse, this is never going to work, because any change they make has to spread through the userbase, and by that time somebody will have reverse-engineered it. Like how trillian, gaim and kopete now have support for the new MSN.
IMHO, this whole thing is non-story. It's a non-solution to a non-problem. Nothing to see here folks, move along.
One small detail: they're only going after people who are (surprise!) breaking the law. Sharing RIAA-owned music is illegal. Plain and simple. And it's even rightly so illegal, because without copyright, the GPL wouldn't exist. If you don't want trouble with the RIAA, then don't break the law.
Now, if you want to criticize them for breaking the CD format (with their shitty copy-protected CD lookalikes), overcharging, minimising the possibility for people to make money off of making good music and keeping music off the internet (in a legal AND usable form), then be my guest. They suck, and you're right to boycott them. But don't boycott them because they're going after people who break the law. They're not wrong doing that.
As an aside, to everyone interested in boycotting the RIAA, but unsure whether they'll still get satisfied musically, I suggest visiting cdbaby.com. It solved the problem for me.
[standard] When an existing standard becomes almost impossible to supersede because of the cost or logistical difficulties involved in convincing all its users to switch something different and, typically, incompatible.
The common implication is that the existing standard is notably inferior to other comparable standards developed before or since.
Things which have been accused of benefiting from lock-in in the absence of being truly worthwhile include: the QWERTY keyboard; any well-known operating system or programming language you don't like (e.g., see "Unix conspiracy"); every product ever made by Microsoft Corporation; and most currently deployed formats for transmitting or storing data of any kind (especially the Internet Protocol, 7-bit (or even 8-bit) character sets, analog video or audio broadcast formats and nearly any file format).
Because of network effects outside of just computer networks, Real World examples of lock-in include the current spelling conventions for writing English (or French, Japanese, Hebrew, Arabic, etc.); the design of American money; the imperial (feet, inches, ounces, etc.) system of measurement; and the various and anachronistic aspects of the internal organisation of any government (e.g., the American Electoral College).
I know Halo1 should be the one to answer this, but I just can't read this and not respond.
Innovation is spurred precisely by the hurdles patents present. I have worked for over a decade with software and hardware developers who, after complaining at length over the existence of a troublesome patent, nearly always created new and even more clever solutions which would not have existed but for the hurdle presented by a patent.
So, if I'm reading your argument correctly, you're claiming that any software patent can be "worked around", effectively reducing the value of software patents to zero (if patents don't cover any and all implementations of an idea, what use are they in protecting that idea?). In that case, why would anyone want software patents?
Also, if all patents do is slow down development of innovative ideas by competing firms, how can you argue they improve innovation?
Copyright provides protection only against direct copying and is exceedingly poorly adapted to protecting innovations in software. Lotus123, the Apple GUI, Wordperfect were all protected by copyright, which did little to prevent MS from expropriating the essence of all of these innovative products.
Excellent examples. Lotus 123 was not the first spreadsheet, visicalc was. The Apple GUI was a direct rip from the ideas formed in Xerox's PARC research group. And wordperfect was one of many companies making a word processor, and certainly not the first. If patents had covered spreadsheets, gui's and word processors, these products would not have even existed to be copied by MS. The point I think Halo1 was trying to make (and you underline perfectly with this argument), is that software patents damage competition so greatly that the economic disadvantage to society is much greater than any benefit a single company or group of companies could get from them. You could argue that this argument applies to all patents, but this isn't necessarily so, because the damage to competition by patents in other forms of business is much smaller, due to the cost of developing a regular patentable idea (a patentable software idea most of the times has negligable r&d cost associated with it, as with the amazon one-click patent, which was obvious to even me, a regular user who writes programs in his spare time now and then), and due to the longer development cycle of other industries.
The question you need to ask yourself, Halo1, is why there so are few huge monoliths in Europe.....
You would prefer a market where a few very large companies control the entire software business, as in the american case with Microsoft having a virtual stranglehold on the desktop software market?
Also, you might want to note that IBM, Microsoft, Sun and Apple all became big BEFORE the current software patent boom in the US (and in the case of IBM and Sun, before software patents even existed), and they did this not by having their ideas protected by patents, but by outcompeting other businesses. In fact, the only example I can think of of a company that would not have gotten as big as it is without patents is google, and the question to ask here is: is it right that only one private enterprise controls the main portal to all content on the internet, and so gets to decide what content people can see and what they can't see? After all, there are countless examples of google censoring websites. With a competitive search engine market there would be no search engine censorship.
The point I'm trying to make is not that software patents don't help single businesses with innovative ideas. Clearly, they do. My point is that patents damage the software industry as a whole, reducing innovation and competition on an industry-wide level. I care more for the entire industry than for any single business.
This has already been done before. Go take a look (and listen) at cdbaby. They have over 34,000 artists, and a lot of them are pretty darn good. I buy most of my music there.
This already exists, it's called ASK (http://www.paganini.net/ask/). It works with a blacklist and a whitelist. People on the whitelist can correspond normally with you. People that have never mailed you before get a mail asking them to reply to be added to the whitelist (spammers use automated tools and fake reply-to addresses, so they never reply), and in the rare case of a spammer actually replying you can add him to the blacklist. It works through procmail.
Pretty cool, I'm thinking about using it. Completely kills spam. Ofcourse, it makes dealing with mailing lists more difficult. And if you get a lot of email from strangers it can get messy quickly too. But most people aren't in that situation.
"Heaven help us if the masses start to use something called Linux or Mozilla, and in the process become more flexible when it comes to operating a PC."
What would you say if I were to put a different type of door-opening device on each one of the doors in your house, so you would become more flexible when it comes to operating a door?
Regular people equate PC's to doors. They're both tools that provide a function. That's it. And no matter how much you want it to be different, it's never going to change.
You're assuming the user actually learns the app well enough to be able to customize it. The sad reality is that most users learn the app just well enough to do their job, poorly. Anything extra is too much. Today my mom had to teach a 24-year old colleague of hers, who just graduated as a lawyer from university, where the undo button is in Word. The colleague was surprised at the existance of the undo functionality and proclaimed she would make good use of it from now on. Imagine that! Go study some average users doing their job, it'll depress you how little they know.
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Firebird simply doesn't have as much linux developers. That's the thing with open source, you can't assign work to your developers. It's one thing saying "firebird needs to be optimised for linux/X", and a whole other thing to actually do it.
... NOT.
What I can tell you though, is that despite firebird being slower on linux than on windows, it's not noticeably slower (for me anyway). And in addition, it is a fast browser, even on linux. On windows it even whoops IE's ass in various benchmarks. A lot of people have misconceptions about firebird's rendering speed because they're used to IE's render-as-soon-as-data-arrives model of updating the screen, which starts sooner, but ends later. If you want that in firebird, type about:config and set nglayout.initialpaint.delay to 0. One more thing: I have a pII/233 that I run firebird on. It runs at a usable clip, even on such a low-end system.
And obviously, whenever a graphical application is slow, it is X's fault
Have you read the right to read? I think rms was indeed VERY visionary in that one, since that seems to be where things in the proprietary world are evolving.
Also, I forgot to mention with respect to package dependancies. Debian has support for suggested packages. In other words, if you install a package it might suggest, but not require, that you install a certain library. Working this into a tree view would be quite the nightmare.
One would have at the top level only packages that have no dependancies. The next level would be packages that directly rely on them, and then the packeges that rely on them, and so on.
Packages dependancies are a directed graph, not a tree. In other words you might have packages A and B at the same level, and C which depends on the both of them. Where do you list it? Under A, under B, or under both? You can think up more convoluted examples easily.
Besides, I agree with other posters that the user shouldn't have to know about dependancies. The user should even have to know the app name of the app he wants. He or she should be able to browse functionality categories, get a list of the apps that provide that functionality, and on double-click have it installed with all dependancies. This would by coupled with deborphan-like functionality to track installed packages that don't provide end-user functionality (read: libraries), but have no packages depending on them (and so are safe to remove to uncruftify your system).
I used deborphan recently on a 2 year old debian system and freed up 1 gigabyte of no longer user packages. 1 whole gigabyte. My system is again as clean as it was the day I installed it. Try doing that on windows.
Keep track of all good user input in one place.
It's called the debian bug tracking system. Use it.
What would happen is that you'd distribute your software as an apt repository on cd (or from the net). The installer would simply add the cd as a source, then apt-get install yourapphere, and apt would install the dependancies from where ever it gets them, be that the net or the cd.
This is possible RIGHT NOW, within the existing apt framework. Why nobody is doing it, I don't know.
How would you combine them? Apt requires that every package on the system is registered with the dpkg database. If you're doing all-in-one installation you'd have to distribute it as a set of packages. At that point, why not just distribute the packages separately on cd-rom, and let apt take care of the heavy-lifting?
Would you really advise debian to someone who can't find and download adaware without being told step by step how to do it?
I run debian myself on all my systems, but the only people I've recommended it to were studying computer science.
Except that the control chip does not come with a pink plastic cup holder that attaches to the outside of the driver's door and a document claiming you're only allowed to use the ignition if said pink cup holder is attached to the right location.
That's basically what these eula's are claiming. I don't see why they should be able to require that, since pink plastic cup holders have nothing whatsoever to do with ignitions, as spyware most of the time has nothing to do with the software it's bundled with.
Although to be fair, spyware is less useful than a cup holder, even if that cup holder is pink.
Nice series of straw men. First you equate lefties with communists, an unproven comparison (and one I disagree with), then you distort communism to make it seem more extremist and impersonal than it really is (or was), and then you conclude that because the right is the opposite of the left (again, not proven, and something I disagree with), they are therefore the good guys. I also love how you directly equate abortion to communism. Very innovative, for a troll.
Ofcourse, the fact that you use a enough of long sentences and big words disguises this quite thoroughly.
Actually, it's easy to find specific allegations of torture. It's also quite easy to find that the international and US courts have no control over guantanamo bay prisoners. And it's easy to find this from multiple sources. To me the very fact that the US government doesn't want courts to get involved signifies they're likely doing stuff that can not see the light of day. If there's nothing to hide, why are they hiding it?
Ofcourse, you could argue that these are all lies and hearsay, and that the US government would never ever use torture. But it is a fact that prisoners on guantanamo bay are held illegally (according to the geneva convention they should be pow's, but the US claims they aren't), and that they do not have due process rights (inalienable human right). If the US is breaking the law anyway in their detainment of these prisoners, would it be such a stretch to imagine them using torture as well?
There is such a thing as psychological torture by the way. If you're being held without accusation, without promise of release, ever (despite that the war in afghanistan is over, pow's haven't been returned or formally accused of a crime), and without even access to counsel or basically the outside world, would you feel ok? I'd feel downright miserable in such circumstances, even if they did not lay a hand on me. The geneva convention's definition of torture is "cruel and unusual treatment", which does not need to have a physical component involved.
I see no need for guantanamo bay. If the people there did something wrong, the regular US judicial system should be able to handle it. If they didn't do something wrong (and no, fighting for your country is not a crime), they should be freed. The very existance of guantanamo bay is a slap in the face of justice.
If you want photoshop to be better at creating png's, download superpng.
Taken to an extreme: Ford is not responsible if you use your truck to kill your neighbor. Nor should they be.
Following your argument, why don't the wireless card makers release specs then? If they're off the hook regarding using these wireless chipsets for illicit purposes, why don't they just release the specs?
See, what you do is:
- install mozilla firebird (pretty much mandatory given that it's neck and shoulders above other browsers)
- install flash-click-to-view
From then on all flash objects will be replaced by a huge button that says "flash: click to view". And guess what, you click that button to view the flash animation!
The only problem is that some sites use idiotic flash detection scripts that break down because this doesn't even load the flash files from the network if you don't click the box.
I have two desktop machines sitting side by side. One of them is always turned on. If I want to "boost my productivity", I boot up the other one. The first one notices this, and automatically runs x2x tunneled over ssh. Presto, suddenly I have a single desktop consisting of two different physical machines. I can completely bog down one machine, and still have the other one be snappy. The downside of this setup is that you can't drag apps from one screen to the other (although copy/paste across screens does work), but in my experience that's not something you really truly miss as opposed to a dual-head setup on a single box.
You can also do this with a linux box and a windows machine with x2vnc, though I imagine tunneling over ssh becomes consideraly less obvious in that case.
Have had this setup for two years now. Works like a champ.
It's innovative! That makes everything alright. After all, if I want to rob the local 7/11 and not get a friendly visit from the men in blue all I need to do is rob it butt-naked, because that way I'm innovating the storerobbing business. Right?
First of all, what, bandwidth-wise is the difference between using Trillian, or using the official MSN, ICQ, AIM or Yahoo clients? Answer: nothing at all. If you're already using the service, switching to a different client does not make a single difference to the IM network's owners.
Secondly, the advertising argument is bogus. Every single IM network out there has officially sanctioned clients that do not display ads. Granted, these are usually for off-beat platforms (like the ad-free version of MSN for the mac), but that doesn't undo their existance. The point of an IM network is to lure people to the things you're actually charging for (like how MS uses MSN messenger to get people to use the for-pay hotmail stuff, or to get an MSN subscription). An IM network itself has no value to a user, because there are too many free alternatives. It's like with email, you don't have to pay for an email address, so almost nobody does (an address that comes with an ISP subscription doesn't count).
Finally, locking out third-party clients is probably more about control than finance. The network owners want total control over what clients access their networks, so they can dictate features (and in the case of MSN, lock out open-source). Ofcourse, this is never going to work, because any change they make has to spread through the userbase, and by that time somebody will have reverse-engineered it. Like how trillian, gaim and kopete now have support for the new MSN.
IMHO, this whole thing is non-story. It's a non-solution to a non-problem. Nothing to see here folks, move along.
One small detail: they're only going after people who are (surprise!) breaking the law. Sharing RIAA-owned music is illegal. Plain and simple. And it's even rightly so illegal, because without copyright, the GPL wouldn't exist. If you don't want trouble with the RIAA, then don't break the law.
Now, if you want to criticize them for breaking the CD format (with their shitty copy-protected CD lookalikes), overcharging, minimising the possibility for people to make money off of making good music and keeping music off the internet (in a legal AND usable form), then be my guest. They suck, and you're right to boycott them. But don't boycott them because they're going after people who break the law. They're not wrong doing that.
As an aside, to everyone interested in boycotting the RIAA, but unsure whether they'll still get satisfied musically, I suggest visiting cdbaby.com. It solved the problem for me.
From dictionary.com:
lock-in
[standard] When an existing standard becomes almost impossible to supersede because of the cost or logistical difficulties involved in convincing all its users to switch something different and, typically, incompatible.
The common implication is that the existing standard is notably inferior to other comparable standards developed before or since.
Things which have been accused of benefiting from lock-in in the absence of being truly worthwhile include: the QWERTY keyboard; any well-known operating system or programming language you don't like (e.g., see "Unix conspiracy"); every product ever made by Microsoft Corporation; and most currently deployed formats for transmitting or storing data of any kind (especially the Internet Protocol, 7-bit (or even 8-bit) character sets, analog video or audio broadcast formats and nearly any file format).
Because of network effects outside of just computer networks, Real World examples of lock-in include the current spelling conventions for writing English (or French, Japanese, Hebrew, Arabic, etc.); the design of American money; the imperial (feet, inches, ounces, etc.) system of measurement; and the various and anachronistic aspects of the internal organisation of any government (e.g., the American Electoral College).
I know Halo1 should be the one to answer this, but I just can't read this and not respond.
Innovation is spurred precisely by the hurdles patents present. I have worked for over a decade with software and hardware developers who, after complaining at length over the existence of a troublesome patent, nearly always created new and even more clever solutions which would not have existed but for the hurdle presented by a patent.
So, if I'm reading your argument correctly, you're claiming that any software patent can be "worked around", effectively reducing the value of software patents to zero (if patents don't cover any and all implementations of an idea, what use are they in protecting that idea?). In that case, why would anyone want software patents?
Also, if all patents do is slow down development of innovative ideas by competing firms, how can you argue they improve innovation?
Copyright provides protection only against direct copying and is exceedingly poorly adapted to protecting innovations in software. Lotus123, the Apple GUI, Wordperfect were all protected by copyright, which did little to prevent MS from expropriating the essence of all of these innovative products.
Excellent examples. Lotus 123 was not the first spreadsheet, visicalc was. The Apple GUI was a direct rip from the ideas formed in Xerox's PARC research group. And wordperfect was one of many companies making a word processor, and certainly not the first. If patents had covered spreadsheets, gui's and word processors, these products would not have even existed to be copied by MS. The point I think Halo1 was trying to make (and you underline perfectly with this argument), is that software patents damage competition so greatly that the economic disadvantage to society is much greater than any benefit a single company or group of companies could get from them. You could argue that this argument applies to all patents, but this isn't necessarily so, because the damage to competition by patents in other forms of business is much smaller, due to the cost of developing a regular patentable idea (a patentable software idea most of the times has negligable r&d cost associated with it, as with the amazon one-click patent, which was obvious to even me, a regular user who writes programs in his spare time now and then), and due to the longer development cycle of other industries.
The question you need to ask yourself, Halo1, is why there so are few huge monoliths in Europe.....
You would prefer a market where a few very large companies control the entire software business, as in the american case with Microsoft having a virtual stranglehold on the desktop software market?
Also, you might want to note that IBM, Microsoft, Sun and Apple all became big BEFORE the current software patent boom in the US (and in the case of IBM and Sun, before software patents even existed), and they did this not by having their ideas protected by patents, but by outcompeting other businesses. In fact, the only example I can think of of a company that would not have gotten as big as it is without patents is google, and the question to ask here is: is it right that only one private enterprise controls the main portal to all content on the internet, and so gets to decide what content people can see and what they can't see? After all, there are countless examples of google censoring websites. With a competitive search engine market there would be no search engine censorship.
The point I'm trying to make is not that software patents don't help single businesses with innovative ideas. Clearly, they do. My point is that patents damage the software industry as a whole, reducing innovation and competition on an industry-wide level. I care more for the entire industry than for any single business.
At least we'll finally be able to put those IBM 200 dpi screens to good use.
Or, you could encode to ogg and rename your files to an .mp3 extension. Any player worth the bytes it's compiled to will play those files just fine.
This has already been done before. Go take a look (and listen) at cdbaby. They have over 34,000 artists, and a lot of them are pretty darn good. I buy most of my music there.
This already exists, it's called ASK (http://www.paganini.net/ask/). It works with a blacklist and a whitelist. People on the whitelist can correspond normally with you. People that have never mailed you before get a mail asking them to reply to be added to the whitelist (spammers use automated tools and fake reply-to addresses, so they never reply), and in the rare case of a spammer actually replying you can add him to the blacklist. It works through procmail.
Pretty cool, I'm thinking about using it. Completely kills spam. Ofcourse, it makes dealing with mailing lists more difficult. And if you get a lot of email from strangers it can get messy quickly too. But most people aren't in that situation.
"Heaven help us if the masses start to use something called Linux or Mozilla, and in the process become more flexible when it comes to operating a PC."
What would you say if I were to put a different type of door-opening device on each one of the doors in your house, so you would become more flexible when it comes to operating a door?
Regular people equate PC's to doors. They're both tools that provide a function. That's it. And no matter how much you want it to be different, it's never going to change.
You're assuming the user actually learns the app well enough to be able to customize it. The sad reality is that most users learn the app just well enough to do their job, poorly. Anything extra is too much. Today my mom had to teach a 24-year old colleague of hers, who just graduated as a lawyer from university, where the undo button is in Word. The colleague was surprised at the existance of the undo functionality and proclaimed she would make good use of it from now on. Imagine that! Go study some average users doing their job, it'll depress you how little they know.