Just a warning, this is not an ideal naming scheme as we found out the hard way after we had a customer call and demand to know why we had a server named after him. (John Holmes)
I've experienced this throughout the years, and I must say this attitude did force me to become highly experienced in all sorts of open source software, though I wouldn't wish it on anybody else. So a few years of professional Linux experience later and I'm the one dishing out advice and explanations to noobs, happy to share the knowledge I gained, even doing the google search legwork for some less inclined noobies when I was unsure or unexperienced in the area of their inquiries.
So do what I do, go out of your way to prove to everyone that you both know what the hell you are talking about and are willing to share it with anyone of any level. When you run across a RTFMer, tell them to STFU and quit being a waste of bandwidth if they don't have anything useful to say. This may not be the most mature way to handle it, but I think it serves two purposes well. The first is to show the noobs that there are experts out there willing to help and even defend them, Linux isn't just for elitist assholes, the second is to show the elitist that his attitude is unappreciated and unaccepted by his peers or even his "superiors".
So everyone out there that can, adopt a noob! Send him on the right path and guide him to the road you took to get where you are. Protect him from the elitist empire. Show them the right way to get the answers they are looking for, and the proper way to ask a question. Let them know there are more good guys out there than bad guys and you'll have contributed something almost as important as the code itself.
All of my friends, ecen the non gamers play Worms World Party, it's easy to learn, a blast to play multiplayer, and only requires one PC and will run on very old hardware (100MHZ, 32MB). Being turn based makes it a bit easier on noobs who can't compete with your highly trained reaction times as a gamer. Chicks especially love Worms for the cute factor. It's also playable by people of all ages, so it's something you can play with your kids.
Mod parent down. What a disgusting display of arrogance and elitism. You're the one who shouldn't be here, regardless of how low your UID is.
"If you do not know what GPG is, you're not a nerd - and you're on the wrong site."
I think about 98% of the science department at any college would tell you exactly what a fucking idiot you are for making such a broadly stupid statement. Are you seriously so deluded that you think the only type of nerd is a computer nerd? And that all computer nerds have heard of this one specific release of a technology rarely used even in business environments? The majority of nerds and geeks don't know what GPG is. People like you and me are the minority, fucking get over it, and get over yourself.
"Seriously: Go away."
Fuck you, you go away. I'd take a complete know-nothing over an arrogant asshole anyday. People like you detract from the value of this site. No one gives a shit you've been here since the 90's. Why don't you go have a plaque made to hang up on your bedrooom wall to show how cool you are? Do you put your slashdot UID on resumes as an acheivement?
"Rude is to be at a site where you obviously do not belong - irritating the people who has frequented the site since the 90s."
Rude is to act like you are the sole arbitrator of who should and should not be allowed to voice their opinion on an open forum, like you're the fucking gestapo or something. Given the recent history of postings The GP has, in the eyes of the users of this site, a better quality of contribution than You.
Based on your attitude I can only assume you are a sad, pathetic man, with delusions of some sort of elevated importance via seniority. I, as well as the majority of slashdotter welcome ANYONE who is interested in science, technology, gaming, or any of the various subjects that slashdot covers, including politics, regardless of their ignorance of a certain subject or technology. You're nothing but an eSnob.
I had a MythTV box for about two years and it did it's job wonderfully. The only problem I had is that I really don't watch that much TV, and MythTV rewuired me to pretty much dedciate an entire system to that task. I finally found a better solution for my needs, and that's just vcr and TVTime. I use TV Time to watch live TV, and VCR + mplayer to watch prerecorded shows. There's a web frontend for VCR, but I don't use it, it's just easier for me to set up cronjobs. So if you're not looking for an HTPC but rather just adding HT capabilities to your main system, I'd suggest a set up like this. There when you need it, out of the way when you don't. No extra processes or services that need to be running.
When I was in my sophomore year high school we had a similar game coding contest at the end of the year, mandatory for all CS students, and voluntary for any student who wanted to enter. There were a lot of cool little games out of it, but mine took first. Not that it was amazing, it was a missile commander clone with the twist of being multiplayer, where up to 4 people could play, 2 defending, and 2 setting the attack points and trajectories. Being the mischeveous little bastard I was back then, I hid a backdoor through an intentional buffer overflow, which was a relatively obscure tactic at the time (1995ish). For my junior and senior years in high school I had a blast messing with other students when they were playing my game, which was now installed by default on all computers in the lab for those that came to play games at lunch. After graduation, I passed on the secret to one of my underclassman friends, and he did the same, for a few years it was an underground legacy until finally someone caught on. I got a call from my old CS teacher, he wanted me to know he thought it was funny, and my game is still installed on all the computers, though patched, and used as his model for teaching the new students what a vulnerability is, and how to find and fix them.
I've been in the DIY projector scene for awhile, and I've never heard of lumenlab.com, or a "for sale" guide. This guide seems to be fairly in depth, but this is one of the more complicated designs. My favorite design is the most simple, and AFAIK the cheapest. Just grab a decent quality projection panel from Ebay, and then grab an overhead projector (just like th eones you used in school) also cheap and readily available on Ebay. You can get this setup for $200-300 and the replacement bulbs are cheap. Very simple to setup, just plugging in the power and video sources and you're good to go. The picture isn't the best, but it's not bad at all, I watch movies, play games, and sometimes just fart around and read slashdot on my bedroom wall. The darker you can get the room, the better the picture will be.
Ok, well, I have an xbox 360 and it crashes constantly, so do two of my friends, while I have another one whose has never crashed. Various polls show between %10-%25 of xbox 360s have a problem with crashing. That's fucking ridiculous. That's a crap product. There's is absolutely NO reason NOT to bash microsoft for this shit. They rushed an unstable product out the door just in time for christmas, and now people are seeing what shit it is and calling MS on it. Even if only %10 of all 360s in circulation have problems with crashing, that is completely unacceptable, and MS deserves every bit of bashing they get for it. Defend MS all you want, they are in the wrong, and I will advise everyone who asks my opinion NOT to buy an xbox 360.
Re:Surely high lethality makes for SLOWER contagio
on
A Flu Pandemic?
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Highly lethal doesn't mean quickly lethal. AIDS is highly lethal, but it takes years or even decades to kill.
Also remember to press 0162 on the keypad not the numbers above the QWERTY line. Also if you want to see all the other nifty characters you can make, run charmap.exe.
If your machines' BIOS don't have the ability to boot to USB storage, you're either running on pretty old hardware, or you really should look into a BIOS upgrade. I was able to update the firmware in four older machines (p2s from college dumpster) to get them to boot to USB. My main desktops motherboard (Soyo KT400) came with that ability (along with about 20 other boot possibilites, like zip, ls120, network, etc) and it's about three years old.
But seriously, I think using this technology to clone our beloved pets would be a great idea. Now granted a cloned pet is not going to be exactly the same, but it will have the ssame genetics, and given the same environment to mature in, the end result should be a very similar pet. I've had a lot of dogs in my life, but Buster the Mutt was by far my favorite. He was super kind and loving and ridiculously smart. I know I will never find another dog like Buster, and given the oppurtunity I'd clone him in a second.
Who says you are next to the computer? I use my wireless KB/mouse combo from my couch to control my mythtv box, good luck finding a 10 foot cord. And as far as batteries go, mine recharges on its stand. Takes about 4 hours to fully charge and then lasts for about two months. I've had to replace the rechargable batteries once in the three years I've had it. The keyboard isn't rechargable, but the batteries last for 3-6 months, depending on use.
What you all seem to not understand, is this in NOT a prison. Jail and Prison are two completely different things. A prison is where you get sent after being found guilty and sentenced to hard time. A county jail is where you go if you got a little too drunk and ran into a cop on the walk home. A county jail is where you go if you got busted for smoking a joint (at least around here). A county jail is where they hold you BEFORE you have your day in court. At any time I guarantee you there is at least 1 innocent person in county jail. You give up your rights only when you commit a felony, not a misdemeanor. Well over %50 of the people in any county jail are still 100% full citizens of the US, and as such deserve every single right they are entitled to.
At any rate, I don't see this as a particular invasion of privacy, you have to wear those wrist ID bands anyways, this one just identifies remotely.
You have a seriously warped view of extradition treaties. If what you suggest was possible, the **AA s wouldn't bother going to norway to try and prosecute DVD Jon, they'd just have him sent over. The only way you can be extradited is if a.) You commit a crime while within the borders of the extraditing country b.) The action you commit in another country is illegal in the nation of your citizenship.
The idea that one country can impose it's law on another is absolutely ridiculous. The only way this is possible is with military force. Seriously, read up on extradition laws in your country, your current view is just plain ignorant.
For most people I would recommend just buying a tivo or something off the shelf like that, but if you're a true geek you're going to want a mythtv system. I spent about ~$1,000 total on mine, but it's the nicest PVR me or my friends have ever come across. It's actually more of a media center than just a PVR. Here's the basic setup..
First I didnt want some clunky beige case sitting beside my TV looking akward, so I opted for a home theater PC case, specifically this one.
I've got two Hauppauge PVR-500's, which are dual tuner cards, so I have a total of 4 tuners (this way I can record 4 different shows at once if they happen to be broadcast simultaneosly. This comes in handy durin g prime time when you would otherwise be forced to pick between different shows.
The rest of the hardware is nothing special, a soyo kt400 mb, 512M ram, athlon 2100+, and a geForce fx 5200. Not a top of the line system by any means, but not bad at all. Probably overkill for doing the PVR stuff, but I do alot more with it than just that.
The software is where it really gets interesting. I use gentoo on most of my machines, and this one was no different, mythtv as well as several plugins are already in portage and installed hassle free. MythTV acts as my front end to TV, weather, DVD's/Movies, Games, etc. I scripted a little GTK frontend to all my emulators and roms, so my PVR is also a NES, SNES, SMS, N64, PSX, etc. (now you see why I needed that GeForce:P) It server as my fileserver and mp3 jukebox, and can stream all of it's data (video,tv,music) to any other PC in my house. I can browse tv listings and schedule show recordings through a web interface from anywhere.
So all in all I spent about 4 times more than a Tivo and got about 20 times more out of it. Not a bad deal I'd say...
YOu act like this is a new phenomenon... on any given day you'll find 2 or 3 stories like this, not always on the front page, but they are there.. did you notice the foot icon indicating humor? If you want to change the way slashdot works, I'd say start with the REAL problems, not the stories you happen to not like. Both the games and IT sections have blinding color themes, we get 20 articles linking to ol Roland P.'s blog, duped stories left and right, flaimbait in the article summaries, and countless other things that are IMNSHO several orders of magnitude more important than slashdot posting an old joke that you dont like.
Seriously, pick your battles a little better, if editors wont listen to the throngs of people complaining about the real problems, they certainly aren't going to start accepting submissions based on your opinion of what slashdot should or should not post.
How can you claim that microsoft "invented" the xbox? It's just a friggin lowend PC. If thats the case when I built my PC I invented the zbox, and z is TWO better than x , so obviously I'm more innovative all of microsoft.
"1. Linux revolves around the kernel. Every time you muck with the kernel to bring about yet another set of "gee whiz bang" features, dozens of things are broken."
Funny, I was able to upgrade from 2.4 to 2.6 without a single thing being broken. All of my applications still work and look the EXACT same as they did before I updated. This may not be true for everyone, but nor is it true for everyone that an Windows or OSX update doesn't break anything.
"2. On the library level, new interfaces are added, but older ones are still supported for a surprisingly long time (see Carbon / Classic Runtime Environment for Mac OS X, or Win9x Compatibility Mode / Application Compatibility Toolkit for Windows 2000 / XP). Certainly, support is eventually dropped, but the pace is normally quite slow for popular APIs."
This is no different in Linux than it is in BSD, or OSX, or Windows, or ANY OPERATING SYSTEM. New interfaces are added at the library level, (ie GTK2), while support remains for the older one (GTK).
"On a visual interface level, both Apple and MS try to keep consistency in the interface. Sure, you'll see major changes in interface every 5-10 years (Windows 95, Windows XP, Mac OS X), but that's a pace most people can cope with, and they try not to change EVERYTHING in the process. Linux, on the other hand: for any random distro, you can't be assurred GUI consistency."
No you cant be assured GUI consistency b/w Linux distros. That's about as ridiculous as saying you expect GUI consistency b/w Windows and OSX. There is no ONE TRUE DESKTOP in Linux and that's an extreme advantage. You want consistency in your GUI just STICK TO THE SAME DISTRO.
"Until Linux stops revolving around the kernel, it will never break out of the server niche."
How exactly is Linux going to stop "revolving" around the kernel, when all Linux is IS the kernel. I hope you dont mean applications revolve around the kernel because that's even dumber. Do you think KDE or Gnome or bash or just about ANY major applications are built around the Linux kernel? Do you not realize that you can run KDE or Gnome on BSD, Linux, OSX, Windows, or just about anything? This is because they DONT REVOLVE AROUND THE INDIVIDUAL OS BUT IMPLEMENT STANDARDS. Thusly the same software can be built on any platform supporting this "interface" regardless of development practices or quirks of the underlying operating system. I really don't know how your post got modded up, it's a bunch of rubbish.
Slashdot Mirror
Just a warning, this is not an ideal naming scheme as we found out the hard way after we had a customer call and demand to know why we had a server named after him. (John Holmes)
I've experienced this throughout the years, and I must say this attitude did force me to become highly experienced in all sorts of open source software, though I wouldn't wish it on anybody else. So a few years of professional Linux experience later and I'm the one dishing out advice and explanations to noobs, happy to share the knowledge I gained, even doing the google search legwork for some less inclined noobies when I was unsure or unexperienced in the area of their inquiries.
So do what I do, go out of your way to prove to everyone that you both know what the hell you are talking about and are willing to share it with anyone of any level. When you run across a RTFMer, tell them to STFU and quit being a waste of bandwidth if they don't have anything useful to say. This may not be the most mature way to handle it, but I think it serves two purposes well. The first is to show the noobs that there are experts out there willing to help and even defend them, Linux isn't just for elitist assholes, the second is to show the elitist that his attitude is unappreciated and unaccepted by his peers or even his "superiors".
So everyone out there that can, adopt a noob! Send him on the right path and guide him to the road you took to get where you are. Protect him from the elitist empire. Show them the right way to get the answers they are looking for, and the proper way to ask a question. Let them know there are more good guys out there than bad guys and you'll have contributed something almost as important as the code itself.
All of my friends, ecen the non gamers play Worms World Party, it's easy to learn, a blast to play multiplayer, and only requires one PC and will run on very old hardware (100MHZ, 32MB). Being turn based makes it a bit easier on noobs who can't compete with your highly trained reaction times as a gamer. Chicks especially love Worms for the cute factor. It's also playable by people of all ages, so it's something you can play with your kids.
Mod parent down. What a disgusting display of arrogance and elitism. You're the one who shouldn't be here, regardless of how low your UID is.
"If you do not know what GPG is, you're not a nerd - and you're on the wrong site."
I think about 98% of the science department at any college would tell you exactly what a fucking idiot you are for making such a broadly stupid statement. Are you seriously so deluded that you think the only type of nerd is a computer nerd? And that all computer nerds have heard of this one specific release of a technology rarely used even in business environments? The majority of nerds and geeks don't know what GPG is. People like you and me are the minority, fucking get over it, and get over yourself.
"Seriously: Go away."
Fuck you, you go away. I'd take a complete know-nothing over an arrogant asshole anyday. People like you detract from the value of this site. No one gives a shit you've been here since the 90's. Why don't you go have a plaque made to hang up on your bedrooom wall to show how cool you are? Do you put your slashdot UID on resumes as an acheivement?
"Rude is to be at a site where you obviously do not belong - irritating the people who has frequented the site since the 90s."
Rude is to act like you are the sole arbitrator of who should and should not be allowed to voice their opinion on an open forum, like you're the fucking gestapo or something. Given the recent history of postings The GP has, in the eyes of the users of this site, a better quality of contribution than You.
Based on your attitude I can only assume you are a sad, pathetic man, with delusions of some sort of elevated importance via seniority. I, as well as the majority of slashdotter welcome ANYONE who is interested in science, technology, gaming, or any of the various subjects that slashdot covers, including politics, regardless of their ignorance of a certain subject or technology. You're nothing but an eSnob.
I had a MythTV box for about two years and it did it's job wonderfully. The only problem I had is that I really don't watch that much TV, and MythTV rewuired me to pretty much dedciate an entire system to that task. I finally found a better solution for my needs, and that's just vcr and TVTime. I use TV Time to watch live TV, and VCR + mplayer to watch prerecorded shows. There's a web frontend for VCR, but I don't use it, it's just easier for me to set up cronjobs. So if you're not looking for an HTPC but rather just adding HT capabilities to your main system, I'd suggest a set up like this. There when you need it, out of the way when you don't. No extra processes or services that need to be running.
When I was in my sophomore year high school we had a similar game coding contest at the end of the year, mandatory for all CS students, and voluntary for any student who wanted to enter. There were a lot of cool little games out of it, but mine took first. Not that it was amazing, it was a missile commander clone with the twist of being multiplayer, where up to 4 people could play, 2 defending, and 2 setting the attack points and trajectories. Being the mischeveous little bastard I was back then, I hid a backdoor through an intentional buffer overflow, which was a relatively obscure tactic at the time (1995ish). For my junior and senior years in high school I had a blast messing with other students when they were playing my game, which was now installed by default on all computers in the lab for those that came to play games at lunch. After graduation, I passed on the secret to one of my underclassman friends, and he did the same, for a few years it was an underground legacy until finally someone caught on. I got a call from my old CS teacher, he wanted me to know he thought it was funny, and my game is still installed on all the computers, though patched, and used as his model for teaching the new students what a vulnerability is, and how to find and fix them.
Just a page hit whore, link goes nowhere useful.
HEADSHOT!
I've been in the DIY projector scene for awhile, and I've never heard of lumenlab.com, or a "for sale" guide. This guide seems to be fairly in depth, but this is one of the more complicated designs. My favorite design is the most simple, and AFAIK the cheapest. Just grab a decent quality projection panel from Ebay, and then grab an overhead projector (just like th eones you used in school) also cheap and readily available on Ebay. You can get this setup for $200-300 and the replacement bulbs are cheap. Very simple to setup, just plugging in the power and video sources and you're good to go. The picture isn't the best, but it's not bad at all, I watch movies, play games, and sometimes just fart around and read slashdot on my bedroom wall. The darker you can get the room, the better the picture will be.
Ok, well, I have an xbox 360 and it crashes constantly, so do two of my friends, while I have another one whose has never crashed. Various polls show between %10-%25 of xbox 360s have a problem with crashing. That's fucking ridiculous. That's a crap product. There's is absolutely NO reason NOT to bash microsoft for this shit. They rushed an unstable product out the door just in time for christmas, and now people are seeing what shit it is and calling MS on it. Even if only %10 of all 360s in circulation have problems with crashing, that is completely unacceptable, and MS deserves every bit of bashing they get for it. Defend MS all you want, they are in the wrong, and I will advise everyone who asks my opinion NOT to buy an xbox 360.
Highly lethal doesn't mean quickly lethal. AIDS is highly lethal, but it takes years or even decades to kill.
Look, there's already an estimated 50,000 math teachers in the US. This move by IBM may add another 5,000. Who the hell needs 75,000 math teachers?
Also remember to press 0162 on the keypad not the numbers above the QWERTY line. Also if you want to see all the other nifty characters you can make, run charmap.exe.
If your machines' BIOS don't have the ability to boot to USB storage, you're either running on pretty old hardware, or you really should look into a BIOS upgrade. I was able to update the firmware in four older machines (p2s from college dumpster) to get them to boot to USB. My main desktops motherboard (Soyo KT400) came with that ability (along with about 20 other boot possibilites, like zip, ls120, network, etc) and it's about three years old.
But seriously, I think using this technology to clone our beloved pets would be a great idea. Now granted a cloned pet is not going to be exactly the same, but it will have the ssame genetics, and given the same environment to mature in, the end result should be a very similar pet. I've had a lot of dogs in my life, but Buster the Mutt was by far my favorite. He was super kind and loving and ridiculously smart. I know I will never find another dog like Buster, and given the oppurtunity I'd clone him in a second.
Who says you are next to the computer? I use my wireless KB/mouse combo from my couch to control my mythtv box, good luck finding a 10 foot cord. And as far as batteries go, mine recharges on its stand. Takes about 4 hours to fully charge and then lasts for about two months. I've had to replace the rechargable batteries once in the three years I've had it. The keyboard isn't rechargable, but the batteries last for 3-6 months, depending on use.
He is upset over the flaws in an Operating System so he switches architectures? He wasn't a PC bigot, he was a Windows bigot.
What you all seem to not understand, is this in NOT a prison. Jail and Prison are two completely different things. A prison is where you get sent after being found guilty and sentenced to hard time. A county jail is where you go if you got a little too drunk and ran into a cop on the walk home. A county jail is where you go if you got busted for smoking a joint (at least around here). A county jail is where they hold you BEFORE you have your day in court. At any time I guarantee you there is at least 1 innocent person in county jail. You give up your rights only when you commit a felony, not a misdemeanor. Well over %50 of the people in any county jail are still 100% full citizens of the US, and as such deserve every single right they are entitled to.
At any rate, I don't see this as a particular invasion of privacy, you have to wear those wrist ID bands anyways, this one just identifies remotely.
"They put you in a driver's seat that both Armstrong the Astronaut and Armstrong the Cyclist would equally enjoy"
But what about Armstrong the overly stretchy action figure?
You have a seriously warped view of extradition treaties. If what you suggest was possible, the **AA s wouldn't bother going to norway to try and prosecute DVD Jon, they'd just have him sent over. The only way you can be extradited is if
a.) You commit a crime while within the borders of the extraditing country
b.) The action you commit in another country is illegal in the nation of your citizenship.
The idea that one country can impose it's law on another is absolutely ridiculous. The only way this is possible is with military force. Seriously, read up on extradition laws in your country, your current view is just plain ignorant.
For most people I would recommend just buying a tivo or something off the shelf like that, but if you're a true geek you're going to want a mythtv system. I spent about ~$1,000 total on mine, but it's the nicest PVR me or my friends have ever come across. It's actually more of a media center than just a PVR. Here's the basic setup..
:P) It server as my fileserver and mp3 jukebox, and can stream all of it's data (video,tv,music) to any other PC in my house. I can browse tv listings and schedule show recordings through a web interface from anywhere.
First I didnt want some clunky beige case sitting beside my TV looking akward, so I opted for a home theater PC case, specifically this one.
I've got two Hauppauge PVR-500's, which are dual tuner cards, so I have a total of 4 tuners (this way I can record 4 different shows at once if they happen to be broadcast simultaneosly. This comes in handy durin g prime time when you would otherwise be forced to pick between different shows.
The rest of the hardware is nothing special, a soyo kt400 mb, 512M ram, athlon 2100+, and a geForce fx 5200. Not a top of the line system by any means, but not bad at all. Probably overkill for doing the PVR stuff, but I do alot more with it than just that.
The software is where it really gets interesting. I use gentoo on most of my machines, and this one was no different, mythtv as well as several plugins are already in portage and installed hassle free. MythTV acts as my front end to TV, weather, DVD's/Movies, Games, etc. I scripted a little GTK frontend to all my emulators and roms, so my PVR is also a NES, SNES, SMS, N64, PSX, etc. (now you see why I needed that GeForce
So all in all I spent about 4 times more than a Tivo and got about 20 times more out of it. Not a bad deal I'd say...
YOu act like this is a new phenomenon... on any given day you'll find 2 or 3 stories like this, not always on the front page, but they are there.. did you notice the foot icon indicating humor? If you want to change the way slashdot works, I'd say start with the REAL problems, not the stories you happen to not like. Both the games and IT sections have blinding color themes, we get 20 articles linking to ol Roland P.'s blog, duped stories left and right, flaimbait in the article summaries, and countless other things that are IMNSHO several orders of magnitude more important than slashdot posting an old joke that you dont like.
Seriously, pick your battles a little better, if editors wont listen to the throngs of people complaining about the real problems, they certainly aren't going to start accepting submissions based on your opinion of what slashdot should or should not post.
How can you claim that microsoft "invented" the xbox? It's just a friggin lowend PC. If thats the case when I built my PC I invented the zbox, and z is TWO better than x , so obviously I'm more innovative all of microsoft.
"Oh, not available for Windows, so you'll have to buy a product instead. But isn't dd much easier than using a program that expires after 270 days."
Check here, and after your done, go buy yourself a clue before you post utter bullshit again.
"1. Linux revolves around the kernel. Every time you muck with the kernel to bring about yet another set of "gee whiz bang" features, dozens of things are broken."
Funny, I was able to upgrade from 2.4 to 2.6 without a single thing being broken. All of my applications still work and look the EXACT same as they did before I updated. This may not be true for everyone, but nor is it true for everyone that an Windows or OSX update doesn't break anything.
"2. On the library level, new interfaces are added, but older ones are still supported for a surprisingly long time (see Carbon / Classic Runtime Environment for Mac OS X, or Win9x Compatibility Mode / Application Compatibility Toolkit for Windows 2000 / XP). Certainly, support is eventually dropped, but the pace is normally quite slow for popular APIs."
This is no different in Linux than it is in BSD, or OSX, or Windows, or ANY OPERATING SYSTEM. New interfaces are added at the library level, (ie GTK2), while support remains for the older one (GTK).
"On a visual interface level, both Apple and MS try to keep consistency in the interface. Sure, you'll see major changes in interface every 5-10 years (Windows 95, Windows XP, Mac OS X), but that's a pace most people can cope with, and they try not to change EVERYTHING in the process. Linux, on the other hand: for any random distro, you can't be assurred GUI consistency."
No you cant be assured GUI consistency b/w Linux distros. That's about as ridiculous as saying you expect GUI consistency b/w Windows and OSX. There is no ONE TRUE DESKTOP in Linux and that's an extreme advantage. You want consistency in your GUI just STICK TO THE SAME DISTRO.
"Until Linux stops revolving around the kernel, it will never break out of the server niche."
How exactly is Linux going to stop "revolving" around the kernel, when all Linux is IS the kernel. I hope you dont mean applications revolve around the kernel because that's even dumber. Do you think KDE or Gnome or bash or just about ANY major applications are built around the Linux kernel? Do you not realize that you can run KDE or Gnome on BSD, Linux, OSX, Windows, or just about anything? This is because they DONT REVOLVE AROUND THE INDIVIDUAL OS BUT IMPLEMENT STANDARDS. Thusly the same software can be built on any platform supporting this "interface" regardless of development practices or quirks of the underlying operating system. I really don't know how your post got modded up, it's a bunch of rubbish.