There's flame wars and there's truth - climate is changing, and unexpectedly fast. Much faster than we expected. And at this point I actually don't care anymore it is fault of capitalists, libertarians, commies, or what else. How we could expect to get our shit together if we even can't agree that change is happening? How we gonna *survive*?
This is fault of uneducated crowd making political decisions, t.i. electing populist leaders who won't say anything unpleasant to them. You can be pro-business and pro-capital and still capable to deliver harsh news *and* a plan how to deal with a problem. Unfortunately, there is serious shortage of such people (I don't even talk about politicians).
In nutshell, people don't like bad news and they do anything in their power to avoid them (also group thinking in our capitalist society pushing them to avoid take a blame) - that's human nature. Be that flame wars, denials, demolition of the messenger - whatever. Also your whining is part of the "I don't wanna listen because no one here is expert and I don't wanna hear that we have screwed up everything" crowd.
Not sensible, but suicidal. Also so far I have seen no country (except North Korea and Stalin time USSR) who would not allow it's peers rise issue in highest constitutional court. Sorry, but you can't have it both ways. You can't cherry pick restrictions in normal working democracy. Sooner or later they are thrown out.
Also you couldn't be part of any normal treaty, as they require issues to solve in different international courts. No treaty, no exports, no money from taxes. And quite possibly no credits too.
"Counter sue the company (under it's own laws)" - again, maybe not so smart idea. What you will counter-sue for? Because they "blackmailed to sue"? Law doesn't work that way. Of course, if company have done bad things according to law - no problem, sue it out of existence.
"Make the company illegal" - I won't even mention about international fallout and isolation what will follow.
I would suggest better such things as (for this specific scenario): a) making copyright law sane again. Make it balanced (like 20 years), make it less restrictive and leave criminal charges only for very serious mass copyright infringements. EMI and friends of course will shout to the sky, as it would remove their privilege to talk about copyright law as something belonging to them (not to mention suddenly term 'IP' will sound silly). People would cheer for you. And maybe saner countries would follow and finally bring some sanity for copyright world; b) better inform people about copyright infringements and what that means. Not in "you are a pirate", but "artist is given 20 year privilege to this work, please, respect that. But 20 years". Problem with people ignoring copyright is these insane terms. Remove them and people will see reason why work is protected for some time;
Corporations sue governments for some 80 years, welcome to the club. They usually choose not to because it's bad for their business in that country. However, if they are arrogant enough and have "special relationship" with politicians, then this threat is not only legal step, but also psychological one - do not dare to cross us, you are in our pocket.
"Perestroika didn't work, because Gorbachev, whatever his other qualities, was still a communist at heart, and never pushed the reforms far enough. Glasnost was however quite successful, and, IMHO, was a direct contributor to the fall of communism in Eastern Europe, and to the subsequent disollution of the USSR."
Disclaimer: I'm from Eastern Europe, so I know a little bit what you talk about. Also I'm socialist by nature, but I don't believe in forced change, nor change forced upon someone, so I'm kinda torn always about this:)
What I really don't like that we mix up terms, especially when talking about regimes. Russians like to mix Fascism with Nazism (which is very ironic taking into account that their country now is definitely Fascist by definition - look up for definition to understand what I'm talking about) when they talk about World War II and their struggle against Hitler.
Also in my opinion what was in USSR after 1925 wasn't communism (before that there was just bloody chaos with both sides killing people like there's no tomorrow). It was totalitarianism with Bolshevist rule - and some socialist juice (like free medicine, stable work or social guarantees) thrown in. If fact all real old Marxists (still people with lot of blood on their hands, but they aimed to open Communist party and allow discussions and criticism) died in 1937 purges by hand of Stalin. After that it was mix of Russian nationalism (as "nation-unifier"), totalitarianism and elitism of one party elite.
If we take bigger picture, most of killings weren't any way connected to Communism or people killed poised any threat to regime. For example big purges usually involved barbaric competition (who will kill most people to show it's dedication to leader) or getting rid of unpleasant people using atmosphere of mistrust and lies.
(I suggest to read what actually community rule meant in Russia in 1905 - 1917, Stalinism era and other stuff. Wikipedia has good start material for this.)
In nutshell - Gorbachev wasn't communist (I'm ready to bet that there were very few key people who actually believed it was possible to achieve in Communist party at that time already) as he was just a part of the this system, which tried to protect itself. However Perestroika didn't work due of other problems - actually reforms were too successful. They opened USSR too much and harsh reality of economics started to kick in. People were tired of promises and compromises between freedom and life quality and talking about changes (but with no any possibility trying them) was too much. Regime couldn't deliver what they wanted also because they had wasted all their money in arm competition with the West - and (ohh irony) in Afghanistan. Also only counteractions like famous unsuccessful August coup (or January OMON attacks) pushed people to support nationalists in their soviet republics to claim independence and separation because they understood quite good what would come.
You oversimplify knowledge of English in general society. Most people like to read stuff in their mother language. For example while I know English (and particularly IT English) quite well, I'm still using Latvian interfaces and enjoy reading stuff in Latvian language, including Latvian Wikipedia. Yes, I read tons of materials in English, but still...
It is all about access. Having information in English is better than no having information at all, but having it in local language is a must.
Oversimplified, protests are for different reasons. They are connected, but not fully.
Russians protest against their leadership don't care about their voice, and what most important - they haven't delivered nothing they promised in exchange. So it has moral and also quite practical basis for Russians anger.
Americans and Europeans this year protest mostly against *system* - t.i. you can elect different people, they can try to fix it, but in the end system will prevail. See what happened to UK PM Cameron when he had to decide control & tax City or not. Of course he decided against it, claiming that it is against "country interests". Also people start to understand that capitalism has serious flaws and it is quite possible that we can't fix them (unless people with money start to listen to reason).
Also Europeans try to protest against austirity, but I see it as wrong target - we can't escape from need to shorten our expenses. What we need to say in one voice that rich people should bear more. It's not that I'm against them, but they will feel much less impact. If you will take away from foor and middle class - it won't be pretty.
But in nutshell austerity is needed. We can't say "stupid evil bankers" and require for them to pay our bills. Tax them, allright, but spend less too.
Middle East and Africa did protest about same reasons as Russians - more democracy, more delivering on results, more caring about nation. Again, for idealistic and practical reasons at once.
"What many of the revolutionary Arab states are voting for, the Persians have lived with it for 40 years."
IMHO no, this is oversimplification of Islam. What Persians have there is special version of Islam (Shia) which is famous with "I know what God wants because I have born in right family!". That means that they don't give a shit what society actually thinks - they just force their stuff on others. It is not that traditional (also called Sunni) Islam is any better - but still it doesn't feel like total dead end (especially when they drop all Islam state ideas which has little to do with core of beliefs anyway). Anyway, I'm still here to see Islam's Renaissance. It is not that Christianity were more sane before 1400.
Also with Iran I'm wishing to go even so far to claim that oppression and choking of democracy there have little if any connection with religion. In my opinion, Ali Khamenei and his team are just self-righteous power hungry freaks and Islam is just their dressing to justify their need of power fix. He is their Putin, Lukashenko, etc. Structure and fundamental footing of religion in Iran gave them opportunity to size it. If they would be so religious, they wouldn't be so big friends of Russia and China (which both are shiny examples of oligarchic regimes with high propaganda levels).
And this is reason not to hear their (in this case US) point of view? As Iran's regime actively twists information about US to their society, it is quite understandable that US wants to push their POV to be more widely avaible for Persians. It is not that you have to agree or have to take anything they say as truth. Just listen to different sources and make up your own mind about events.
As we know, flow of open, unbiased information (and unchanged correctly reported POV from all sides is part of this information) is a basis of any democratic society. Yes, we in West struggle with main media agendas, manipulation, etc. But we still have a choice and we can get information directly from the sources (with the help of Internet). So US feels that they should inform Persians directly about their opinion - good. Iran regime still can do the same. Independent journalism can scrutinize US claims in their info stream.
Makes sense, as US don't have big problems with common Persian people - they have problem with nut heads at the top. I know, someone will come here again and will complain how US is corporation dictatorship, how Iran stands out for being "different", etc. etc. Please. We all know what this government is really all about. And yes, in current state of affairs there's still HUGE difference between power obsessed richies and "I'm fundamentally right to call myself a hand of the God and I will execute my rights nuking you" regime. First ones are nasty and we are growing tired from them, but it doesn't mean that we should be happy about second ones. Both kind are power junkies and both have nasty cold turkeys to deal with power withdrawal.
I can agree with Greenpeace that nuclear is kinda itchy stuff - lots of shit can go wrong. However, there's lot of research in nuke field and LFTR (aka Liquid fluoride thorium reactor) are kinda hopeful stuff. No one knows if it turns out to "good guy" and saveour of our energy needs, but I would be very happy to Greenpeace express some sense and support less harmful and potentially dangerous nuclear energy ways. However, they deny all nuclear outright even without slipping into discussion. And that's hurts, because there's lot of stuff I and Greenpeace can fully agree with.
This just cries for anti-trust case. Why, because patents are artificial monopoly on something. When patent expires, your monopoly also expires. Any action which aims artificiality restrict choice in your monopolised market is unlawful, period.
"The desktop search is useless, just like it is on Windows and Mac OS X. It's a stupid paradigm. It takes the worst of shell auto-completion, and tries to make it act like a web search engine, with spectacularly shitty results."
Results and behaviour can definitely be improved. In concept, idea is superb (I loved OS X Spotlight when it was introduced), and it is how people actually use computers everyday.
"The themes support is a step backward. It has only made it easier for theme designers to use crap like gradients, curved corners and transparency. While these may help make GNOME 3 more hipster-compatible, they do absolutely nothing to make the resulting UI more effective in any way."
How gradients, curved corners and transparency isn't a boon for theme designers? How exactly it is backwards? Again, effectiveness and usefulness of theme is left for users to decide.
"It's also a royal pain in the ass to develop for, although this has always been the case for GNOME. GObject is a pathetic hack. If you want object-oriented C, then just use C++ or Objective-C. But that was apparently too sensible for the GNOME developers."
At this point I already know that you are miserable troll, because it is quite clear that you don't know a shit about GObject and Introspection, which is proper way to use GTK/GNOME APIs. Do I smell former KDE troll?
You could get away with simple "I like XFCE better, because I'm just so used to this type of gui", but nooo, flamethrower can't idle for so long.
Why screwing around with GNOME Shell design when you can improve upon GNOME Panel port to GTK+3? I know it is harder to code in C/GObject than creating JavaScript extensions for GS, but still - it is more viable, and less broken way to do it. It would also be nice if someone would improve Gnome Panel introspection support and therefore allow to use Javascript for it's extensions as for Gnome Shell.
I personally use GNOME Shell (without any customisations) and I love it - after six months with it. What can I say - for each it's own. I'm not surprised that lot of users defend gnome panel idea of it's usefulness and sentimental status (GNOME with GP 2.32 is definitely highest point of G enviroment). But there was strong idication that developers will move on. Yes, I was worried at first too. But then I ran first GNOME 3 betas with Fedora and was hooked (I still dislike Unity quite strongly, but due of several design issues, not because of concept). Of course, no one has invalidiated GNOME 2.32 (or using ported GNOME Panel). Simply now those who want to keep it using should pick up up pieces and try to improve or at least provide security and crash patches. It is not that hard, Code is there. Lot of GNOME devs will definitely help you if you will be serious about that.
Democracy in it's essence - never-ending fight. Especially with freeloaders (yeah, corps, you are freeloaders - 160 - 180 years of copyright protection?! Come on!).
And Viacom, you allow to watch me Colbert Report for free on your own damn website. With ads.
For the rest...industry going down and shareholders crying cramping their coffers "Nooooo, not ooooour moooooneeeeey! Where is infinite profits!?". Just put them out of misery.
Actually I didn't say that I don't like copyrighted products. What I dislike that I can't buy tv series or movies at affordable price in my country. iTunes started to offer music and movie sells only a month ago - it is after some five, six years after release of service in US? While music prices are quite OK (FF Wasting Light goes a vastly cheaper than in shops), movies are still expensive, newest titles will be available after very long time - and you still can forget about TV series. As I said, it's probably syndication, but there's lot of stuff which won't be shown anyway (like "Stargate Universe") because it is too niche or expensive for local tv stations to buy, translate and show.
I like art. I'm musician myself and I enjoy well-made music and cinema. What I don't like that I can't get access to them when I want to.
And yeah, in the end I will try to follow independents now more, as mainstream cartels aren't that interested in my money.
p.s. another problem with copyright is that it should be at least 20 years from publishing moment (not "second life starting from creator's death" BS we currently have). After that if you haven't succeeded in making money from it - though luck, but you probably never will. And btw, it doesn't deny your rights to create new versions of products which again will have 20 years of protection. Improve it, rearrange it, sell it again.
1) "Firefly" or "SGU" or whatever your sci-fi poison is can't and won't be retrieved this way - because it is too expensive and Netflix subscribers simply won't do all the lifting; 2) As someone already pointed out, Netflix and other streaming services which streams tv series are kinda useless in big picture, because they won't be allowed in the rest of the world due of syndication/greed/whatever is new reason for MAFIAA to restrict their product to be available for rest of us; 3) And I'm alergic to bulshit like SOPA too - so I see less and less initiative to play by the rules. If they think that threatening everyone like wannabe criminals, why I should try to change their mind? There is lot of other things to really worry about, like hunger, economical stagnation, or even existence of capitalism itself. I will try to get myself into more independent stuff and support them - as I already do using open source and free software for 11 years.
NYPD has some valid reasons to clean that park (as it is private and not everything happens by the book), but they totally drop the ball with trying to control it as much as possible - it is already crying out loud "dictatorship".
As for OWS - those people should understood that only protesting nothing will change - they have to get into politics at this moment. Two party system have failed US, because currently elites of both parties are drawn in lobby money and are constantly encycled by rich people. Even if someone like Obama wants really to do something (I'm not saying that he did or does), usually such initiatives are leveled with low level complaining. If it doesn't work, "unamerican", "socialist", etc. arguments comes up. You know how it works.
This is my biggest bone with copyright laws - it gives rights to collect copyright fees to private entity - and what's most important - they don't have to prove that it is their representative they collect money for. Our local agency claims that they have rights to do it so, and after author will make agreement with them, they will pay money back (minus admin fees of course). This is bordering with absurd, but honestly, people lack of insight in such difficult subject helps heavily, as lobbyist groups have freeway to copyright laws.
While I fully understand that you still want GNOME 2 with GNOME Panel because it is what you have used to, I can also give you alternatives for your requests: 1) Meta key plus letters - works exactly as it should. App menu is still reachable in overview mode, only one additional click away; 2) No need for task bar - expose works again as charm - and nothing stands between app and me when I work with it; 3) I don't have answer to first one, second and third could be extended by extensions; 4) again, extensions; 5) meta key plus letters 6) extensions; 7) extensions; 8) extensions; 9) extensions; 10) meta key plus term plus enter (for terminal) - faster than mouse; 11) yes, there are bugs, 3.2 is much more improved and 3.4 will be even better;
Problem is that you actually want GNOME 2 but it won't come back. All I can suggest is to support GNOME Panel 3 port and don't let it die. Improve it. Report bugs. If successful, it could help all "GNOME Panelists" all around the world not to be stuck in GTK+2/GNOME 2 land.
As I mentioned at the end of the post, I don't actually care if you use something different or agree with me. I just said that in my opinion most of the criticism is off the target, because aim of GNOME 3 and Gnome Shell isn't to look like GNOME 2. If I was fanboi, I would tell that everything is perfect, but it's not - I have my own share of issues which I'm trying to help to fix with bug reports and even patches. However, fundamentally, I totally dig what I see in GNOME Shell - and I have quite a experience using tons of different GUIs during my sysadmin time.
About that "open mind" argument - it came out as answer to rather flamboyant parent post, it felt that it hasn't actually cared to try it (not just fit in a "GNOME 2" hole). Therefore my reply.
In the end I could agree that we waste much more time on these debates that we should (I'm not here to change your mind and you won't change mine). There always will be some multiple "free desktop enviroments" and that's not gonna change. What we should work on is compatibility, cross-platform issues, etc. All that stuff what freedesktop.org and co do. We already done tons of useful stuff on this (for example, D-BUS is undeniable king of interapps messanging). So let's keep working on that.
You have actually *used* it on desktop for a week with open mind? I did exactly that, I'm sysadmin and I'm *more* productive with it - and I have three friends with are geeks and use GS on everyday basis without big modifications. Meta key with two or even one letter - and I have app running. In case when time is essential, it is a bless. All apps running fullscreen, without interaption from bottom panel. Switching finally sane with expose (can be improved though).
Look, problem is, people have problem with retraining stuff they do every day. With some geeks, it's colossal because they simply see themselves right. I'm not saying that GS doesn't have valid criticism - but it is very far from such claims as "it doesn't look like GNOME 2", "It looks too much Mac like", etc. Yes, it's different. If you don't like it, fine. Use other DE.
Well, you sound like a troll, but have some interesting prospects in your post.
First of all, apt and apt-get were truly a first repository/packaging system which worked. It is strange that you couldn't find your way with it, especially with using Aptitude or Ubuntu Software Center (which is really still a bless, even I dislike Unity quite strongly).
Fedora were no argument for Ubuntu till GNOME 3. Fedora always have impemented vanilla GNOME - for better or worse. Ubuntu polished GNOME and rest of components till 10.04 like there was no tomorrow. However, problems with drivers are getting old and I agree that it is big problem for now for Linux distributions. Fedora now looks very good if you can handle migration to GNOME Shell.
However, in the end, it really doesn't matter which distro you use - unless it is mainstream and it has additional software packaged for it.
Slashdot Mirror
There's flame wars and there's truth - climate is changing, and unexpectedly fast. Much faster than we expected. And at this point I actually don't care anymore it is fault of capitalists, libertarians, commies, or what else. How we could expect to get our shit together if we even can't agree that change is happening? How we gonna *survive*?
This is fault of uneducated crowd making political decisions, t.i. electing populist leaders who won't say anything unpleasant to them. You can be pro-business and pro-capital and still capable to deliver harsh news *and* a plan how to deal with a problem. Unfortunately, there is serious shortage of such people (I don't even talk about politicians).
In nutshell, people don't like bad news and they do anything in their power to avoid them (also group thinking in our capitalist society pushing them to avoid take a blame) - that's human nature. Be that flame wars, denials, demolition of the messenger - whatever. Also your whining is part of the "I don't wanna listen because no one here is expert and I don't wanna hear that we have screwed up everything" crowd.
"Make suing the government/country illegal"
Not sensible, but suicidal. Also so far I have seen no country (except North Korea and Stalin time USSR) who would not allow it's peers rise issue in highest constitutional court. Sorry, but you can't have it both ways. You can't cherry pick restrictions in normal working democracy. Sooner or later they are thrown out.
Also you couldn't be part of any normal treaty, as they require issues to solve in different international courts. No treaty, no exports, no money from taxes. And quite possibly no credits too.
"Counter sue the company (under it's own laws)" - again, maybe not so smart idea. What you will counter-sue for? Because they "blackmailed to sue"? Law doesn't work that way. Of course, if company have done bad things according to law - no problem, sue it out of existence.
"Make the company illegal" - I won't even mention about international fallout and isolation what will follow.
I would suggest better such things as (for this specific scenario):
a) making copyright law sane again. Make it balanced (like 20 years), make it less restrictive and leave criminal charges only for very serious mass copyright infringements. EMI and friends of course will shout to the sky, as it would remove their privilege to talk about copyright law as something belonging to them (not to mention suddenly term 'IP' will sound silly). People would cheer for you. And maybe saner countries would follow and finally bring some sanity for copyright world;
b) better inform people about copyright infringements and what that means. Not in "you are a pirate", but "artist is given 20 year privilege to this work, please, respect that. But 20 years". Problem with people ignoring copyright is these insane terms. Remove them and people will see reason why work is protected for some time;
Corporations sue governments for some 80 years, welcome to the club. They usually choose not to because it's bad for their business in that country. However, if they are arrogant enough and have "special relationship" with politicians, then this threat is not only legal step, but also psychological one - do not dare to cross us, you are in our pocket.
International agreements, like "protection of investment", also you can base your claim on constitution.
They can sue government (aka Ireland) for this. No one says they would win. But as it seems these threats are quite enough for government.
"Perestroika didn't work, because Gorbachev, whatever his other qualities, was still a communist at heart, and never pushed the reforms far enough. Glasnost was however quite successful, and, IMHO, was a direct contributor to the fall of communism in Eastern Europe, and to the subsequent disollution of the USSR."
Disclaimer: I'm from Eastern Europe, so I know a little bit what you talk about. Also I'm socialist by nature, but I don't believe in forced change, nor change forced upon someone, so I'm kinda torn always about this :)
What I really don't like that we mix up terms, especially when talking about regimes. Russians like to mix Fascism with Nazism (which is very ironic taking into account that their country now is definitely Fascist by definition - look up for definition to understand what I'm talking about) when they talk about World War II and their struggle against Hitler.
Also in my opinion what was in USSR after 1925 wasn't communism (before that there was just bloody chaos with both sides killing people like there's no tomorrow). It was totalitarianism with Bolshevist rule - and some socialist juice (like free medicine, stable work or social guarantees) thrown in. If fact all real old Marxists (still people with lot of blood on their hands, but they aimed to open Communist party and allow discussions and criticism) died in 1937 purges by hand of Stalin. After that it was mix of Russian nationalism (as "nation-unifier"), totalitarianism and elitism of one party elite.
If we take bigger picture, most of killings weren't any way connected to Communism or people killed poised any threat to regime. For example big purges usually involved barbaric competition (who will kill most people to show it's dedication to leader) or getting rid of unpleasant people using atmosphere of mistrust and lies.
(I suggest to read what actually community rule meant in Russia in 1905 - 1917, Stalinism era and other stuff. Wikipedia has good start material for this.)
In nutshell - Gorbachev wasn't communist (I'm ready to bet that there were very few key people who actually believed it was possible to achieve in Communist party at that time already) as he was just a part of the this system, which tried to protect itself. However Perestroika didn't work due of other problems - actually reforms were too successful. They opened USSR too much and harsh reality of economics started to kick in. People were tired of promises and compromises between freedom and life quality and talking about changes (but with no any possibility trying them) was too much. Regime couldn't deliver what they wanted also because they had wasted all their money in arm competition with the West - and (ohh irony) in Afghanistan. Also only counteractions like famous unsuccessful August coup (or January OMON attacks) pushed people to support nationalists in their soviet republics to claim independence and separation because they understood quite good what would come.
You oversimplify knowledge of English in general society. Most people like to read stuff in their mother language. For example while I know English (and particularly IT English) quite well, I'm still using Latvian interfaces and enjoy reading stuff in Latvian language, including Latvian Wikipedia. Yes, I read tons of materials in English, but still...
It is all about access. Having information in English is better than no having information at all, but having it in local language is a must.
Oversimplified, protests are for different reasons. They are connected, but not fully.
Russians protest against their leadership don't care about their voice, and what most important - they haven't delivered nothing they promised in exchange. So it has moral and also quite practical basis for Russians anger.
Americans and Europeans this year protest mostly against *system* - t.i. you can elect different people, they can try to fix it, but in the end system will prevail. See what happened to UK PM Cameron when he had to decide control & tax City or not. Of course he decided against it, claiming that it is against "country interests". Also people start to understand that capitalism has serious flaws and it is quite possible that we can't fix them (unless people with money start to listen to reason).
Also Europeans try to protest against austirity, but I see it as wrong target - we can't escape from need to shorten our expenses. What we need to say in one voice that rich people should bear more. It's not that I'm against them, but they will feel much less impact. If you will take away from foor and middle class - it won't be pretty.
But in nutshell austerity is needed. We can't say "stupid evil bankers" and require for them to pay our bills. Tax them, allright, but spend less too.
Middle East and Africa did protest about same reasons as Russians - more democracy, more delivering on results, more caring about nation. Again, for idealistic and practical reasons at once.
"What many of the revolutionary Arab states are voting for, the Persians have lived with it for 40 years."
IMHO no, this is oversimplification of Islam. What Persians have there is special version of Islam (Shia) which is famous with "I know what God wants because I have born in right family!". That means that they don't give a shit what society actually thinks - they just force their stuff on others. It is not that traditional (also called Sunni) Islam is any better - but still it doesn't feel like total dead end (especially when they drop all Islam state ideas which has little to do with core of beliefs anyway). Anyway, I'm still here to see Islam's Renaissance. It is not that Christianity were more sane before 1400.
Also with Iran I'm wishing to go even so far to claim that oppression and choking of democracy there have little if any connection with religion. In my opinion, Ali Khamenei and his team are just self-righteous power hungry freaks and Islam is just their dressing to justify their need of power fix. He is their Putin, Lukashenko, etc. Structure and fundamental footing of religion in Iran gave them opportunity to size it. If they would be so religious, they wouldn't be so big friends of Russia and China (which both are shiny examples of oligarchic regimes with high propaganda levels).
And this is reason not to hear their (in this case US) point of view? As Iran's regime actively twists information about US to their society, it is quite understandable that US wants to push their POV to be more widely avaible for Persians. It is not that you have to agree or have to take anything they say as truth. Just listen to different sources and make up your own mind about events.
As we know, flow of open, unbiased information (and unchanged correctly reported POV from all sides is part of this information) is a basis of any democratic society. Yes, we in West struggle with main media agendas, manipulation, etc. But we still have a choice and we can get information directly from the sources (with the help of Internet). So US feels that they should inform Persians directly about their opinion - good. Iran regime still can do the same. Independent journalism can scrutinize US claims in their info stream.
Makes sense, as US don't have big problems with common Persian people - they have problem with nut heads at the top. I know, someone will come here again and will complain how US is corporation dictatorship, how Iran stands out for being "different", etc. etc. Please. We all know what this government is really all about. And yes, in current state of affairs there's still HUGE difference between power obsessed richies and "I'm fundamentally right to call myself a hand of the God and I will execute my rights nuking you" regime. First ones are nasty and we are growing tired from them, but it doesn't mean that we should be happy about second ones. Both kind are power junkies and both have nasty cold turkeys to deal with power withdrawal.
I can agree with Greenpeace that nuclear is kinda itchy stuff - lots of shit can go wrong. However, there's lot of research in nuke field and LFTR (aka Liquid fluoride thorium reactor) are kinda hopeful stuff. No one knows if it turns out to "good guy" and saveour of our energy needs, but I would be very happy to Greenpeace express some sense and support less harmful and potentially dangerous nuclear energy ways. However, they deny all nuclear outright even without slipping into discussion. And that's hurts, because there's lot of stuff I and Greenpeace can fully agree with.
This just cries for anti-trust case. Why, because patents are artificial monopoly on something. When patent expires, your monopoly also expires. Any action which aims artificiality restrict choice in your monopolised market is unlawful, period.
"The desktop search is useless, just like it is on Windows and Mac OS X. It's a stupid paradigm. It takes the worst of shell auto-completion, and tries to make it act like a web search engine, with spectacularly shitty results."
Results and behaviour can definitely be improved. In concept, idea is superb (I loved OS X Spotlight when it was introduced), and it is how people actually use computers everyday.
"The themes support is a step backward. It has only made it easier for theme designers to use crap like gradients, curved corners and transparency. While these may help make GNOME 3 more hipster-compatible, they do absolutely nothing to make the resulting UI more effective in any way."
How gradients, curved corners and transparency isn't a boon for theme designers? How exactly it is backwards? Again, effectiveness and usefulness of theme is left for users to decide.
"It's also a royal pain in the ass to develop for, although this has always been the case for GNOME. GObject is a pathetic hack. If you want object-oriented C, then just use C++ or Objective-C. But that was apparently too sensible for the GNOME developers."
At this point I already know that you are miserable troll, because it is quite clear that you don't know a shit about GObject and Introspection, which is proper way to use GTK/GNOME APIs. Do I smell former KDE troll?
You could get away with simple "I like XFCE better, because I'm just so used to this type of gui", but nooo, flamethrower can't idle for so long.
Why screwing around with GNOME Shell design when you can improve upon GNOME Panel port to GTK+3? I know it is harder to code in C/GObject than creating JavaScript extensions for GS, but still - it is more viable, and less broken way to do it. It would also be nice if someone would improve Gnome Panel introspection support and therefore allow to use Javascript for it's extensions as for Gnome Shell.
I personally use GNOME Shell (without any customisations) and I love it - after six months with it. What can I say - for each it's own. I'm not surprised that lot of users defend gnome panel idea of it's usefulness and sentimental status (GNOME with GP 2.32 is definitely highest point of G enviroment). But there was strong idication that developers will move on. Yes, I was worried at first too. But then I ran first GNOME 3 betas with Fedora and was hooked (I still dislike Unity quite strongly, but due of several design issues, not because of concept). Of course, no one has invalidiated GNOME 2.32 (or using ported GNOME Panel). Simply now those who want to keep it using should pick up up pieces and try to improve or at least provide security and crash patches. It is not that hard, Code is there. Lot of GNOME devs will definitely help you if you will be serious about that.
Democracy in it's essence - never-ending fight. Especially with freeloaders (yeah, corps, you are freeloaders - 160 - 180 years of copyright protection?! Come on!).
....just how they. don't. get. it.
And Viacom, you allow to watch me Colbert Report for free on your own damn website. With ads.
For the rest...industry going down and shareholders crying cramping their coffers "Nooooo, not ooooour moooooneeeeey! Where is infinite profits!?". Just put them out of misery.
Actually I didn't say that I don't like copyrighted products. What I dislike that I can't buy tv series or movies at affordable price in my country. iTunes started to offer music and movie sells only a month ago - it is after some five, six years after release of service in US? While music prices are quite OK (FF Wasting Light goes a vastly cheaper than in shops), movies are still expensive, newest titles will be available after very long time - and you still can forget about TV series. As I said, it's probably syndication, but there's lot of stuff which won't be shown anyway (like "Stargate Universe") because it is too niche or expensive for local tv stations to buy, translate and show.
I like art. I'm musician myself and I enjoy well-made music and cinema. What I don't like that I can't get access to them when I want to.
And yeah, in the end I will try to follow independents now more, as mainstream cartels aren't that interested in my money.
p.s. another problem with copyright is that it should be at least 20 years from publishing moment (not "second life starting from creator's death" BS we currently have). After that if you haven't succeeded in making money from it - though luck, but you probably never will. And btw, it doesn't deny your rights to create new versions of products which again will have 20 years of protection. Improve it, rearrange it, sell it again.
1) "Firefly" or "SGU" or whatever your sci-fi poison is can't and won't be retrieved this way - because it is too expensive and Netflix subscribers simply won't do all the lifting;
2) As someone already pointed out, Netflix and other streaming services which streams tv series are kinda useless in big picture, because they won't be allowed in the rest of the world due of syndication/greed/whatever is new reason for MAFIAA to restrict their product to be available for rest of us;
3) And I'm alergic to bulshit like SOPA too - so I see less and less initiative to play by the rules. If they think that threatening everyone like wannabe criminals, why I should try to change their mind? There is lot of other things to really worry about, like hunger, economical stagnation, or even existence of capitalism itself. I will try to get myself into more independent stuff and support them - as I already do using open source and free software for 11 years.
NYPD has some valid reasons to clean that park (as it is private and not everything happens by the book), but they totally drop the ball with trying to control it as much as possible - it is already crying out loud "dictatorship".
As for OWS - those people should understood that only protesting nothing will change - they have to get into politics at this moment. Two party system have failed US, because currently elites of both parties are drawn in lobby money and are constantly encycled by rich people. Even if someone like Obama wants really to do something (I'm not saying that he did or does), usually such initiatives are leveled with low level complaining. If it doesn't work, "unamerican", "socialist", etc. arguments comes up. You know how it works.
This is my biggest bone with copyright laws - it gives rights to collect copyright fees to private entity - and what's most important - they don't have to prove that it is their representative they collect money for. Our local agency claims that they have rights to do it so, and after author will make agreement with them, they will pay money back (minus admin fees of course). This is bordering with absurd, but honestly, people lack of insight in such difficult subject helps heavily, as lobbyist groups have freeway to copyright laws.
While I fully understand that you still want GNOME 2 with GNOME Panel because it is what you have used to, I can also give you alternatives for your requests:
1) Meta key plus letters - works exactly as it should. App menu is still reachable in overview mode, only one additional click away;
2) No need for task bar - expose works again as charm - and nothing stands between app and me when I work with it;
3) I don't have answer to first one, second and third could be extended by extensions;
4) again, extensions;
5) meta key plus letters
6) extensions;
7) extensions;
8) extensions;
9) extensions;
10) meta key plus term plus enter (for terminal) - faster than mouse;
11) yes, there are bugs, 3.2 is much more improved and 3.4 will be even better;
Problem is that you actually want GNOME 2 but it won't come back. All I can suggest is to support GNOME Panel 3 port and don't let it die. Improve it. Report bugs. If successful, it could help all "GNOME Panelists" all around the world not to be stuck in GTK+2/GNOME 2 land.
As I mentioned at the end of the post, I don't actually care if you use something different or agree with me. I just said that in my opinion most of the criticism is off the target, because aim of GNOME 3 and Gnome Shell isn't to look like GNOME 2. If I was fanboi, I would tell that everything is perfect, but it's not - I have my own share of issues which I'm trying to help to fix with bug reports and even patches. However, fundamentally, I totally dig what I see in GNOME Shell - and I have quite a experience using tons of different GUIs during my sysadmin time.
About that "open mind" argument - it came out as answer to rather flamboyant parent post, it felt that it hasn't actually cared to try it (not just fit in a "GNOME 2" hole). Therefore my reply.
In the end I could agree that we waste much more time on these debates that we should (I'm not here to change your mind and you won't change mine). There always will be some multiple "free desktop enviroments" and that's not gonna change. What we should work on is compatibility, cross-platform issues, etc. All that stuff what freedesktop.org and co do. We already done tons of useful stuff on this (for example, D-BUS is undeniable king of interapps messanging). So let's keep working on that.
It works for me and my friends. Propably won't for you, because it seems that you have already decided even trying it seriously :)
You have actually *used* it on desktop for a week with open mind? I did exactly that, I'm sysadmin and I'm *more* productive with it - and I have three friends with are geeks and use GS on everyday basis without big modifications. Meta key with two or even one letter - and I have app running. In case when time is essential, it is a bless. All apps running fullscreen, without interaption from bottom panel. Switching finally sane with expose (can be improved though).
Look, problem is, people have problem with retraining stuff they do every day. With some geeks, it's colossal because they simply see themselves right. I'm not saying that GS doesn't have valid criticism - but it is very far from such claims as "it doesn't look like GNOME 2", "It looks too much Mac like", etc. Yes, it's different. If you don't like it, fine. Use other DE.
Well, you sound like a troll, but have some interesting prospects in your post.
First of all, apt and apt-get were truly a first repository/packaging system which worked. It is strange that you couldn't find your way with it, especially with using Aptitude or Ubuntu Software Center (which is really still a bless, even I dislike Unity quite strongly).
Fedora were no argument for Ubuntu till GNOME 3. Fedora always have impemented vanilla GNOME - for better or worse. Ubuntu polished GNOME and rest of components till 10.04 like there was no tomorrow. However, problems with drivers are getting old and I agree that it is big problem for now for Linux distributions. Fedora now looks very good if you can handle migration to GNOME Shell.
However, in the end, it really doesn't matter which distro you use - unless it is mainstream and it has additional software packaged for it.