The distro that has the absurdly expensive yearly-lockin, super annoying marketing practises, and does thing as root ?
As someone who did a bit of business with the company when they still operated under the "Lindows" name I can say you're totally wrong.
First, there *is no yearly lock-in*. After you purchase your copy of LinSpire you never *have* to spend another penny on software or services. Nothing prevents you from downloading, compiling, and installing your own software. If you want the convenience that Click-N-Run offers (which takes some work on the part of the LinSpire team) then you can choose to pay for that convenience. But you don't have to be locked in if you're willing to do your own work.
Secondly, in case you haven't read their site for like the last two years, you *don't* have to "do everything as root". As of version 2.0 you could create individual, restricted, non-root accounts. So, until you actually know what you're talking about please don't spread FUD just to spread FUD.
Lastly, LinSpire might not be exactly what we all want in a distro. But it *is* doing a great job at getting people - average newbies - to take a serious look at Linux where they might not have done so if it weren't for the distro. It might not be *your* favorite distro but it is helping to break the MS monopoly and gently introduce people to Linux. It allows people to ease into Linux at their pace instead of tossing all sorts of stuff they have no clue about like some distros do. The average Windows user is *not* terribly technically literate. They can be educated but it has to be at a gradual and easy pace. I think that LinSpire does a great job at this. Handholding where it's needed but letting the user go on their own when they're ready.
MP3 Player for GMail Account
on
Gmail in the News
·
· Score: 3, Funny
I have a few GMail invites laying around and would like to trade one of them for an MP3 player. Doesn't have to be an IPod but just one with decent storage space and easy to use. Email me if interested.
While I haven't used SQL Server since the 2000 version, I wasn't too impressed by Query Analyzer. It doesn't seem like *that* complex of an application and I would think someone could duplicate it for Linux in a very short period of time if they had a good understanding of how SQL Server works. Why not simply write a replacement or, if you're not a programmer, find a couple of buddies who'd be interested in doing it?
I don't understand everyone making a big deal about things like this. Where do these people get that we are guaranteed privacy in *public* places? I'd like to know *how* people think this could lead to abuse? It's not providing any information that anyone walking down the street couldn't visually obtain. Further, who *cares* if it's hijacked -- it's *public* information.
It gets so tiring watching these knee jerk reactions to everything posted here on slashdot.
The death of President Reagan gave me some time and reason to pause and consider our country, my political party, and how both have changed over few years. When you think about it, it's really saddening and scary...
America *used* to be a shining light for freedom in our world. We used to fight for the rights of oppressed people, fight for freedom of speech, and label anyone who dared try to limit our God given constitutional rights as traitors and deal with them accordingly. Then, in a few days in September 2001, that all changed for some reason.
Now, we label those who want Americans to have unrestricted freedoms as traitors. We lable those who speak their minds and take their liberties seriously "terrorists" and we crucify anyone who doesn't tout whatever party line happens to be in effect at the moment (it really is a moving target).
Cases like Mr. Al-Hussayen, the Iraqi prison abuses, and countless others serve as a sad reminder that this is not the America that many of us grew up in or really want to be a part of. In the Reagen years, they say we felt a sense of national pride. We were proud to be Americans. Now, I think we simply feel a sense of national shame.
Don't get me wrong, I am not blaming President Bush for all of this. I do believe that he is a good man trying to do what he believes is right for his country. But there are others in our government who, for whatever reasons, seem to have set up another of the worlds great evil empires and are weilding that power to go after people like Sami Omar Al-Hussayen.
We wonder why people the world over dispise us as a people. We wonder why people think our government and political system are evil. We wonder why nobody trusts us. I'm sure Mr. Al-Hussayen, many Iraqi citizens, and a few American citizens could give us a lot of reasons why.
It is good news that he was found not guilty. Unfortunately, like another poster here says, this won't end the governments persecution of innocent people. They will simply view him as one that got away, draft legislation to tighten loopholes, take away a few more freedoms, and continue the fight. Man, what a year this 1984 is...
Let me preface this post by saying this is *not* intended to be a troll post so please don't take it as such. I simply don't understand this fascination with everything Linus...
One of the things that we in the open source movement tout is that "distributiveness" of the developers involved with even major projects like Linux, Apache, etc. Yet, every time Linus moves (be it a job or a home) it is rabidly reported on sites like Slashdot, NewsForge, etc. Why? If the distributed nature of OSS development is one of its strong points then *why* do we care where Linus lives and when or where he moves to?
Linus is a great man who's done humanity a huge good by developing the Linux Kernel. But I'm starting to look at him like I look at Elvis: I think Elvis was a talented musician but I won't have much to do with his music since his "worshippers" have made him a near God. The cult like atmosphere surrounding him is a definate turn-off. The same cult like symptoms are developing around Linus and this spells trouble for OSS. We already have a reputation for being zealots where everything rises and sets around Linux. This kind of rabid fanship just solidifies that image in the publics mind and hurts our cause. Linux is *much* bigger than Linus now and, while he is a star, he is by far not the only one in the community. We need to remember that folks.
I am *so* tired about reading how we don't need something because IPv6 will come in and raise our children, save our souls, and feed every man, woman, and child on the face of the planet. IPv6 *is* a good thing and it will solve many of our current security concerns. But - and this is the important point so read carefully - it isn't widely adopted yet and probably won't be for a number of years to come. So it doesn't *matter* if IPv6 would solve the problem now. We don't have it deployed well now so we use a stopgap solution until then.
I've looked into doing something like this a while back. Putting buttons, etc on the toolbar *is* possible and those buttons can be used to dynamically turn on/off any IE feature. The problem is that for certain things - and I think JScript is one of those things - IE must be restarted. This, of course, kind of defeats the purpose.
While I haven't looked at the source yet, the snippet of the project file you posted IS NOT an indication that it is written in.NET. This appears to be a plain old Visual C++ file. Visual C++ != C# or any other.NET language.
Perhaps you missed the news: the AFB and the S4 area (known as Area 51) has been "official" since the mid 1990's. It should also be noted that it is widely believe that the S4 facility at Groom Lake has been moved to another facility somewhere in Utah.
You may be right to an extent: both camps have their agendas and are willing to do a lot (including lie sometimes) to move those agendas forward. But look at the motivations of each and things soon become much clearer...
Proprietary software is all about removing consumer choice in order to gain marketshare. The more people that dump boatloads of money into your software, the more people that train on and become experts on your software, the more people that develop towards your software, lessens that chance that those people will ever move away from your software or service. Why? Economics! If you paid several million dollars for software in this economy and invested huge amounts of time and energy in it you would be very wary about moving to something else - especially something of such highly contested value as open source. In proprietary software, the software's success relies primarily on the quality of the marketing department and not the software itself.
Contrast this with the open source model: you write software and give it away. But we're not talking freeware here we're talking source code and all. You're empowering consumers. You're saying "use this software and, if you don't like the way we're doing things then change it or go to someone else who'll change it". That is a powerful thing. It's forcing the development company to compete on a much higher level and necessitates that they develop much better software because there is much less incentive for a company to stay with you as a vendor if you mess up. With open source software, people stay with you because you are the best and they are loyal. In proprietary software people stay with you because they've dumped millions or hundreds of millions of dollars into your platform and are so confused by marketing FUD that they are afraid to leave. It's a huge difference.
Don't get me wrong: I am not saying that proprietary software is always a bad thing. I don't believe it is if it in the hands of an ethical and responsible company. Unfortunately, there are too few of them out there to effect change in the proprietary landscape. Personally, I would love to see a hybrid of the GPL and a proprietary license. Why NOT provide the source code with a proprietary product. Allow users to customize the product to their needs. Allow them to create very tight integration components that spawn whole communities around your software. But still sell it in a quasi-proprietary model. We could have the best of both worlds: fully business friendly OSS. Unfortunately, that probably won't happen for a very long time until open source developers stop being so freaking anti-commercialization. Like I said, that probably won't happen for a very long time to come.
usually only gets you more requests for free help.
Your view of the "problems" associated with barter only shows your limited (and uninformed) view of what barter really is. It also shows how skewed our societies view of value is too.
Explain to me how, if I perform work for someone and they give me something of value in return, am I working for free? Is there some law that I'm not aware of that says that, for something to be considered payment, it has to be money?
Let's say I want a new iPod and I do computer work for someone who offers me an iPod in trade. Does it matter that they didn't hand me cash and I went to a store and bought an iPod. The point is I staill have what I want. Same with anything else. Face it, barter is an important part of our business world. Nearly ever Fortune 100 company barters with others. I'm pretty sure they woudln't do that if it was only getting them more request for free stuff.
entered a bogus address and promptly created a new spamtrap address to match it. I didn't use that new address for anything else. If I remember correctly, it took only two weeks before the spam started flooding in.
I did something similar with a few companies a few years ago. One of the things I found was that a lot of the "We've removed you" is basically bogus. I spent about 2 hours one afternoon entering bogus information into the "unsubscribe email address" box and each time I got a "Your email has been successfully removed from our database" even thought I knew there *was* no such email address in their database
I presume that one of two things was happening here: 1) either it was a bogus "remove me" system where they didn't do a damn thing or 2) it was actually ADDING those now confirmed email addresses to their spam lists.
Maybe you're one of the millions that haven't heard that key portions of the Bill of Rights have been revoked.
As I said in a previous post on this article, I can understand people being frustrated at the US government for their actions in the "War on Terror". But the notion that key portions of the Bill of Right have been revoked is total and utter nonsense. The article is no better either.
My strong belief is that we have a God given right to be frustrated with the government and, as a people, we have a God given right to take up arms and stand with fellow patriots against our own government if the need arises. However, we're not talking about someone who did that. We are talking about a man who deliberately went and fought for a foreign government against his own country. That is, IMHO, treason and I think that those who do things like this by default give up their civil liberties. How can you fight against your country and what it stands for while invoking the protections thereof when they come to get your ass? Terrorists, American citizens or not, give up their rights when they choose to enable or support terrorist activities against their own government. I feel the same about someone who goes to another country and relinquishes their American citizenship.
And what exactly do you have to do to get on this list?
I think most Americans realize that the entire "finding terrorists" thing here in the USA is being mis-used as a means to expand the governments powers into places they used to want to be in but couldn't because of those pesky civil liberties.
These days it doesn't take much for the government to invade your privacy. All they need to do is label you a "terror suspect" (which of course can mean pretty much anything they want it to mean). Are you a fundamentalist Christian? Do you believe the Bible is the inspired word of God? Do you take some or all of it literally? Then, in the governments eyes, you have a very high probability of being or becoming a terrorist. Are you concerned about your civil liberties being stripped away? Likewise if you've voiced ANY anti-American sentiment or shown any kind of pro-islamic views. Scary huh? When youhave some time, go read the FBI, CIA, and DHS's papers on identifying terrorists. It gets scarier.
I realize that we are in a war and we are at war with a movement that would love nothing more than to see as many people dead as possible. But taking away our rights simply isn't the answer to winning that war. Personally, I would rather have a higher risk of terrorism and more civil liberties than be totally safe with few liberties. There has to be a balance somwhere and I do hope that the government finds it soon. It's getting pretty weird out there. I'm starting to understand how our society ends up breeding people like Timothy McVeigh and how they end up so frustrated with the government that they commit these horrible crimes. I'm not saying I condone it - it's wrong; it was murder. But I do understand it.
I was just discussing this very same thing with my wife earlier today. As a person with very poor eyesight, I can't get a license and thus, my wife has to shuttle me everywhere I go. I do have a bicycle but that simply doesn't work for a lot of things. What do you guys recommend for someone who wants good speed (30-50 mph is fine) but doesn't require a license?
You can use barcodes and scanners and printers and everything with LAMP these days.
Hmmm, I can see how one could develop a CLI program using PHP and Gtk but how would someone build a web app that can handle barcodes, scanners, and printers? This was something I was looking to do not long ago.
Since I don't know what type of system your customer is running it's hard to suggest a complete solution. But I will say that, if your client is running Windows, you could whip up a fairly robust POS/Inventory system using VB and a MySQL backend. There are/were a lot of POS systems written in VB6 back in the day and you might want to look around at those to see if you could simply extend them to fit your clients needs.
Also, if your client isn't using barcodes, scanners, etc, you *might* actually be able to get by with this using nothing more than a LAMP solution.
Not everything belongs on the web. Email is one of those things
I agree with everything you said except the quote above. While you're right that your hard disk and grep give you a better solution than GMail does you're many times only getting a *local* solution. This is where web based email can come in handy.
I came across an example of this last month. I was working at a secure location and they were paranoid enough where they didn't allow Telnet or SSH connections out of their network. They did, however, allow HTTP traffic. I needed a document I'd forgotten in email. No problem, I simply connected to GMail and there was my document. Had that same document been on my hard disk at home it would have been totally useless to me.
Too many times people tend to fight things simply because it's different from the way they're used to doing thing. GMail is a step up for webmail and will definately find use in a lot of different situations. Maybe YOU can't find use for it but that doesn't mean it is without use.
Hold a major EU election ONLY in The Netherlands. Tell everyone that if they turn out to vote there will be as much sex and drugs as they want then...oh wait...nevermind.
Even if it were, the OS community should never "relax." This is business, and business is tough. Let your guard down at the wrong time and it's game over.
I think that your statement about business actually addresses one of, IMHO, is OSS's weakest point: companies like Microsoft, Oracle, etc are fighting a *business* war. Much of OSS is still stuck fighting an ideological one.
Why do some people *need* to hate an entire culture of people? This decision within the EU doesn't prove that Europeans are liars and pushovers anymore than it would mean that if passed in any other country. What it *does* mean is that politicians are politicians regardless of what country they are in and will always cater to special interests, regardless of what those who elect them actually want.
I think another good thing to do would be to refrain from purchasing ANY software from a European company that chooses to patent its' work. I'm not talking about companies like Microsoft who are U.S. based. I mean companies based in the EU. It could have a huge economic impact. Unfortunately, because I am in the USA, I can only support by spirit. But this HAS to be fought.
Unfortunately, the masses are already primed for this line of thought. Try suggesting to the average person that they use strong encryption and see what your answer will probably be: "Why would I need encryption? I have nothing to hide!" The general populace already think that the only people who use encryption are hackers, mobsters, drug dealers, child molesters, and terrorists. It would be very easy for the industry to exploit that mindset. Very easy indeed.
Slashdot Mirror
As someone who did a bit of business with the company when they still operated under the "Lindows" name I can say you're totally wrong.
First, there *is no yearly lock-in*. After you purchase your copy of LinSpire you never *have* to spend another penny on software or services. Nothing prevents you from downloading, compiling, and installing your own software. If you want the convenience that Click-N-Run offers (which takes some work on the part of the LinSpire team) then you can choose to pay for that convenience. But you don't have to be locked in if you're willing to do your own work.
Secondly, in case you haven't read their site for like the last two years, you *don't* have to "do everything as root". As of version 2.0 you could create individual, restricted, non-root accounts. So, until you actually know what you're talking about please don't spread FUD just to spread FUD.
Lastly, LinSpire might not be exactly what we all want in a distro. But it *is* doing a great job at getting people - average newbies - to take a serious look at Linux where they might not have done so if it weren't for the distro. It might not be *your* favorite distro but it is helping to break the MS monopoly and gently introduce people to Linux. It allows people to ease into Linux at their pace instead of tossing all sorts of stuff they have no clue about like some distros do. The average Windows user is *not* terribly technically literate. They can be educated but it has to be at a gradual and easy pace. I think that LinSpire does a great job at this. Handholding where it's needed but letting the user go on their own when they're ready.
Anthony
While I haven't used SQL Server since the 2000 version, I wasn't too impressed by Query Analyzer. It doesn't seem like *that* complex of an application and I would think someone could duplicate it for Linux in a very short period of time if they had a good understanding of how SQL Server works. Why not simply write a replacement or, if you're not a programmer, find a couple of buddies who'd be interested in doing it?
It gets so tiring watching these knee jerk reactions to everything posted here on slashdot.
America *used* to be a shining light for freedom in our world. We used to fight for the rights of oppressed people, fight for freedom of speech, and label anyone who dared try to limit our God given constitutional rights as traitors and deal with them accordingly. Then, in a few days in September 2001, that all changed for some reason.
Now, we label those who want Americans to have unrestricted freedoms as traitors. We lable those who speak their minds and take their liberties seriously "terrorists" and we crucify anyone who doesn't tout whatever party line happens to be in effect at the moment (it really is a moving target).
Cases like Mr. Al-Hussayen, the Iraqi prison abuses, and countless others serve as a sad reminder that this is not the America that many of us grew up in or really want to be a part of. In the Reagen years, they say we felt a sense of national pride. We were proud to be Americans. Now, I think we simply feel a sense of national shame.
Don't get me wrong, I am not blaming President Bush for all of this. I do believe that he is a good man trying to do what he believes is right for his country. But there are others in our government who, for whatever reasons, seem to have set up another of the worlds great evil empires and are weilding that power to go after people like Sami Omar Al-Hussayen.
We wonder why people the world over dispise us as a people. We wonder why people think our government and political system are evil. We wonder why nobody trusts us. I'm sure Mr. Al-Hussayen, many Iraqi citizens, and a few American citizens could give us a lot of reasons why.
It is good news that he was found not guilty. Unfortunately, like another poster here says, this won't end the governments persecution of innocent people. They will simply view him as one that got away, draft legislation to tighten loopholes, take away a few more freedoms, and continue the fight. Man, what a year this 1984 is...
One of the things that we in the open source movement tout is that "distributiveness" of the developers involved with even major projects like Linux, Apache, etc. Yet, every time Linus moves (be it a job or a home) it is rabidly reported on sites like Slashdot, NewsForge, etc. Why? If the distributed nature of OSS development is one of its strong points then *why* do we care where Linus lives and when or where he moves to?
Linus is a great man who's done humanity a huge good by developing the Linux Kernel. But I'm starting to look at him like I look at Elvis: I think Elvis was a talented musician but I won't have much to do with his music since his "worshippers" have made him a near God. The cult like atmosphere surrounding him is a definate turn-off. The same cult like symptoms are developing around Linus and this spells trouble for OSS. We already have a reputation for being zealots where everything rises and sets around Linux. This kind of rabid fanship just solidifies that image in the publics mind and hurts our cause. Linux is *much* bigger than Linus now and, while he is a star, he is by far not the only one in the community. We need to remember that folks.
I am *so* tired about reading how we don't need something because IPv6 will come in and raise our children, save our souls, and feed every man, woman, and child on the face of the planet. IPv6 *is* a good thing and it will solve many of our current security concerns. But - and this is the important point so read carefully - it isn't widely adopted yet and probably won't be for a number of years to come. So it doesn't *matter* if IPv6 would solve the problem now. We don't have it deployed well now so we use a stopgap solution until then.
I've looked into doing something like this a while back. Putting buttons, etc on the toolbar *is* possible and those buttons can be used to dynamically turn on/off any IE feature. The problem is that for certain things - and I think JScript is one of those things - IE must be restarted. This, of course, kind of defeats the purpose.
While I haven't looked at the source yet, the snippet of the project file you posted IS NOT an indication that it is written in .NET. This appears to be a plain old Visual C++ file. Visual C++ != C# or any other .NET language.
Not ever again...I'll tell you *that*.
Perhaps you missed the news: the AFB and the S4 area (known as Area 51) has been "official" since the mid 1990's. It should also be noted that it is widely believe that the S4 facility at Groom Lake has been moved to another facility somewhere in Utah.
You may be right to an extent: both camps have their agendas and are willing to do a lot (including lie sometimes) to move those agendas forward. But look at the motivations of each and things soon become much clearer...
Proprietary software is all about removing consumer choice in order to gain marketshare. The more people that dump boatloads of money into your software, the more people that train on and become experts on your software, the more people that develop towards your software, lessens that chance that those people will ever move away from your software or service. Why? Economics! If you paid several million dollars for software in this economy and invested huge amounts of time and energy in it you would be very wary about moving to something else - especially something of such highly contested value as open source. In proprietary software, the software's success relies primarily on the quality of the marketing department and not the software itself.
Contrast this with the open source model: you write software and give it away. But we're not talking freeware here we're talking source code and all. You're empowering consumers. You're saying "use this software and, if you don't like the way we're doing things then change it or go to someone else who'll change it". That is a powerful thing. It's forcing the development company to compete on a much higher level and necessitates that they develop much better software because there is much less incentive for a company to stay with you as a vendor if you mess up. With open source software, people stay with you because you are the best and they are loyal. In proprietary software people stay with you because they've dumped millions or hundreds of millions of dollars into your platform and are so confused by marketing FUD that they are afraid to leave. It's a huge difference.
Don't get me wrong: I am not saying that proprietary software is always a bad thing. I don't believe it is if it in the hands of an ethical and responsible company. Unfortunately, there are too few of them out there to effect change in the proprietary landscape. Personally, I would love to see a hybrid of the GPL and a proprietary license. Why NOT provide the source code with a proprietary product. Allow users to customize the product to their needs. Allow them to create very tight integration components that spawn whole communities around your software. But still sell it in a quasi-proprietary model. We could have the best of both worlds: fully business friendly OSS. Unfortunately, that probably won't happen for a very long time until open source developers stop being so freaking anti-commercialization. Like I said, that probably won't happen for a very long time to come.
Your view of the "problems" associated with barter only shows your limited (and uninformed) view of what barter really is. It also shows how skewed our societies view of value is too.
Explain to me how, if I perform work for someone and they give me something of value in return, am I working for free? Is there some law that I'm not aware of that says that, for something to be considered payment, it has to be money?
Let's say I want a new iPod and I do computer work for someone who offers me an iPod in trade. Does it matter that they didn't hand me cash and I went to a store and bought an iPod. The point is I staill have what I want. Same with anything else. Face it, barter is an important part of our business world. Nearly ever Fortune 100 company barters with others. I'm pretty sure they woudln't do that if it was only getting them more request for free stuff.
I did something similar with a few companies a few years ago. One of the things I found was that a lot of the "We've removed you" is basically bogus. I spent about 2 hours one afternoon entering bogus information into the "unsubscribe email address" box and each time I got a "Your email has been successfully removed from our database" even thought I knew there *was* no such email address in their database
I presume that one of two things was happening here: 1) either it was a bogus "remove me" system where they didn't do a damn thing or 2) it was actually ADDING those now confirmed email addresses to their spam lists.
As I said in a previous post on this article, I can understand people being frustrated at the US government for their actions in the "War on Terror". But the notion that key portions of the Bill of Right have been revoked is total and utter nonsense. The article is no better either.
My strong belief is that we have a God given right to be frustrated with the government and, as a people, we have a God given right to take up arms and stand with fellow patriots against our own government if the need arises. However, we're not talking about someone who did that. We are talking about a man who deliberately went and fought for a foreign government against his own country. That is, IMHO, treason and I think that those who do things like this by default give up their civil liberties. How can you fight against your country and what it stands for while invoking the protections thereof when they come to get your ass? Terrorists, American citizens or not, give up their rights when they choose to enable or support terrorist activities against their own government. I feel the same about someone who goes to another country and relinquishes their American citizenship.
I think most Americans realize that the entire "finding terrorists" thing here in the USA is being mis-used as a means to expand the governments powers into places they used to want to be in but couldn't because of those pesky civil liberties.
These days it doesn't take much for the government to invade your privacy. All they need to do is label you a "terror suspect" (which of course can mean pretty much anything they want it to mean). Are you a fundamentalist Christian? Do you believe the Bible is the inspired word of God? Do you take some or all of it literally? Then, in the governments eyes, you have a very high probability of being or becoming a terrorist. Are you concerned about your civil liberties being stripped away? Likewise if you've voiced ANY anti-American sentiment or shown any kind of pro-islamic views. Scary huh? When youhave some time, go read the FBI, CIA, and DHS's papers on identifying terrorists. It gets scarier.
I realize that we are in a war and we are at war with a movement that would love nothing more than to see as many people dead as possible. But taking away our rights simply isn't the answer to winning that war. Personally, I would rather have a higher risk of terrorism and more civil liberties than be totally safe with few liberties. There has to be a balance somwhere and I do hope that the government finds it soon. It's getting pretty weird out there. I'm starting to understand how our society ends up breeding people like Timothy McVeigh and how they end up so frustrated with the government that they commit these horrible crimes. I'm not saying I condone it - it's wrong; it was murder. But I do understand it.
I was just discussing this very same thing with my wife earlier today. As a person with very poor eyesight, I can't get a license and thus, my wife has to shuttle me everywhere I go. I do have a bicycle but that simply doesn't work for a lot of things. What do you guys recommend for someone who wants good speed (30-50 mph is fine) but doesn't require a license?
Hmmm, I can see how one could develop a CLI program using PHP and Gtk but how would someone build a web app that can handle barcodes, scanners, and printers? This was something I was looking to do not long ago.
Also, if your client isn't using barcodes, scanners, etc, you *might* actually be able to get by with this using nothing more than a LAMP solution.
I agree with everything you said except the quote above. While you're right that your hard disk and grep give you a better solution than GMail does you're many times only getting a *local* solution. This is where web based email can come in handy.
I came across an example of this last month. I was working at a secure location and they were paranoid enough where they didn't allow Telnet or SSH connections out of their network. They did, however, allow HTTP traffic. I needed a document I'd forgotten in email. No problem, I simply connected to GMail and there was my document. Had that same document been on my hard disk at home it would have been totally useless to me.
Too many times people tend to fight things simply because it's different from the way they're used to doing thing. GMail is a step up for webmail and will definately find use in a lot of different situations. Maybe YOU can't find use for it but that doesn't mean it is without use.
Hold a major EU election ONLY in The Netherlands. Tell everyone that if they turn out to vote there will be as much sex and drugs as they want then...oh wait...nevermind.
I think that your statement about business actually addresses one of, IMHO, is OSS's weakest point: companies like Microsoft, Oracle, etc are fighting a *business* war. Much of OSS is still stuck fighting an ideological one.
Why do some people *need* to hate an entire culture of people? This decision within the EU doesn't prove that Europeans are liars and pushovers anymore than it would mean that if passed in any other country. What it *does* mean is that politicians are politicians regardless of what country they are in and will always cater to special interests, regardless of what those who elect them actually want.
I think another good thing to do would be to refrain from purchasing ANY software from a European company that chooses to patent its' work. I'm not talking about companies like Microsoft who are U.S. based. I mean companies based in the EU. It could have a huge economic impact. Unfortunately, because I am in the USA, I can only support by spirit. But this HAS to be fought.
Unfortunately, the masses are already primed for this line of thought. Try suggesting to the average person that they use strong encryption and see what your answer will probably be: "Why would I need encryption? I have nothing to hide!" The general populace already think that the only people who use encryption are hackers, mobsters, drug dealers, child molesters, and terrorists. It would be very easy for the industry to exploit that mindset. Very easy indeed.