The medical/plumbing analogy fails because the duty of a jury or judge is not merely to determine technically whether the defendant violated some arbitrary piece of legislative code, but more importantly, to determine whether that law is just in the first place. "Experts" tend to forget to even question that aspect of the system.
Professionals don't need to get swayed by a lawyer's sweet talk. They're already on the side of the state -- against the defendant. Juries aren't, although I would not call one of those pathetic groups of hand-picked sheep we have today "juries". The problem is getting real juries who know what they're there for and know that they have the right and duty to judge the law itself, not just to determine whether the defendant violated the law as written. But the jury system in general at least has more potential for this than a "professional" system.
"Professionals" who have a vested interest in maintaining oppressive laws, rather than "laymen" who might possible have an interest in reducing government tyranny.
Ah, the utilitarian objection. The first answer is that it doesn't matter. The utilitarian position that you refer to basically acknowledges that yes, copyrights (and patents, etc.) violate rights, but that that doesn't matter because the alleged consequences -- more written works, inventions, etc. -- of this rights-violation are convenient or useful.
In a sense, it's a scare tactic. "Just think what the world would be like without all these books, movies, etc.!" At best, it's Machiavellian: the ends justify the means.
Stephan Kinsella (an attorney and author specializing in "intellectual property", international law, and Internet law) wrote in a September, 2000 article on Napster, utilitarianism, and the second homesteading principle:
First, even if a given policy could increase "net" wealth by redistributing property from A to B, that does not justify the policy. The goal of law is justice, not wealth maximization. B may be helped "more" than A is harmed by redistribution, but how does this justify the harm done to A? By the reasoning of utilitarians, we could not condemn every act of theft, rape, or murder; we would have to weigh the benefit to the thief, rapist, or murderer against the harm suffered by the victim, to determine whether or not the crime should be permitted. In cases where the aggressor enjoys his crime "more" than it harms the victim, it is not a crime at all, and should be permitted, since net wealth is increased. Clearly, this is a wholly immoral and unprincipled view.
If this fact were well understood, support for copyright, patents, and trademarks would be much lower than it is today. Hence the emphasis on using terms like "rights" and particularly "Intellectual Property", which pro-monopoly people and companies use to frame the debate on terms that are favorable to themselves. This is one reason it's important to avoid using such terms when discussing this type of enforced monopoly, except of course when critiquing the terms themselves.
Kinsella continues:
Finally, even if we set aside the problems of interpersonal utility comparisons and the justice of redistribution and plow ahead and employ standard utilitarian measurement techniques, it is not at all clear that IP laws do lead to an increase or decrease in overall wealth.(8) That is, it has not been demonstrated that the "costs" of copyright and other IP laws outweigh the benefits of such laws.
Utilitarian analysis is thoroughly confused and bankrupt: talk about increasing the size of the pie is methodologically flawed; there is no clear evidence that the pie size is increased by IP rights; and in any event pie growth simply does not justify the use of force against the otherwise-legitimate property of others. For these reasons, utilitarian defenses of IP are not persuasive.
...
Not only is utilitarianism morally insufficient to justify property redistribution, but it is incoherent as well. As Austrian economists have shown, the utilitarian weighing of costs against benefits requires the impossible be done, namely making interpersonal utility comparisons, as when the "costs" of copyright laws are subtracted from the "benefits" to determine whether such laws are a net benefit. In short, there is no way to compare the benefit to B and the detriment to A of a given redistributionist policy, because values and disvalues have no cardinal magnitude. The reason for this is that values are subjective and ordinal, not cardinal.
As for the claim that without copyright, fewer works would be created, there's no solid evidence of that position. What we have seen is quite contrary. For example, the abundance of Free/Open Source software is a great argument against this position. It's not even true that free software authors never get monetary compensation for their works. Many companies hire programmers to improve existing free software projects. Neither is free sof
That's just it. The thing you seem to be incapable of understanding is that a right, by definition, cannot be defined or granted by law.
You may have said that you believe in rights granted by law, but your posts have betrayed the fact that you do not believe in rights at all, especially considering your admission that "law" only means whatever can be accomplished by force. Since rights are what may not (rightfully) be violated by force, a right which is only established by force is not a right at all.
Wrong again. The signers of the Declaration did not refer to a specific enumerated list of rights. Rather, they said that men are endowed with rights and that "among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness." They clearly recognized the existence of additional rights. Further, while "the right to own property" is not part of that sentence, property rights are a necessary part of liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Just because you think you have a right to violate other people's rights, it isn't so. Now, please, shut the fuck up, you pathetic, ignorant git.
You really are good at giving advice that you need to take yourself. The fact is, you have no right to violate the rights of others. Those rights exist, whether you accept that fact or not.
Your opinions are disgusting. It is your belief that you do not have the right to exist unless government tells you that you do. It is difficult to imagine a more appalling thought than that.
Since you refer to the US Constitution, I'll quote from a document which the signers of the Constitution agreed with: the Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
The signers of the Constitution believed that rights were self-evident and unalienable. They denied your claim that rights are granted by government. Rights exist. Governments exist to protect rights. Government has no other valid reason to exist. That was the general opinion of the signers of the Constitution, and nothing in the Constitution suggests otherwise. The Bill of Rights speaks of rights which exist; it does not say "the people hereby have the right...", nor "this document creates the right...", nor "Congress shall grant the right...".
What you are actually saying is that whatever happens is right, whatever anyone does is right, and that we cannot, a priori, say what is right or wrong. That is, you deny the existence of rights. A right, by definition, is something which noone may rightfully violate. You are disingenuous in claiming that government gives rights, when you don't even believe they exist.
A simple deduction from the premise of property rights tells us that copyright is bad, even as it was originally intended.
The premise: An individual has the right to the free use of his own property, insofar as he does not violate the rights of someone else. No one has the right to violate the rights of someone else.
Given that premise, let's say that you own a house and the land it resides on, a blank journal book, a pen, and a copy of "The Pillars of the Earth" by Ken Follett, and that you have a neighbor next door, who lives in his own house. I think you will agree that a.) you have the right to sit in your house, b.) you have the right to give your blank journal book to your neighbor, c.) you have the right to give your pen to your neighbor, and d.) you have the right to give your copy of "The Pillars of the Earth" to your neighbor.
I assert that you have the right to sit in your own house and copy, word for word, "The Pillars of the Earth" into your journal. Another way of saying this is that noone has the right to stop you from copying the book. Further, you have the right to give your journal to your neighbor after you have finished copying every word of "The Pillars of the Earth" into it. Can you rebut this assertion without denying the premise stated above?
I believe that you cannot disagree with my assertion without making an additional assumption. The common statement of this assumption is: An author has the right to the exclusive copying of a book he has written.
You say that the protection of copyright is given by the people of the nation, rather than being an inherent or automatic right of the author. This opinion, it is true, is closer to the original idea of copyright. For you, let's restate the additional assumption as "the people of a nation have the right to prevent an individual from making a copy of a book written by another individual". I don't mean to mischaracterize your opinion -- would you agree that that is an accurate statement of an assumption you are making (or the logical consequence of another assumption, which makes no difference here)?
But who are the people of the nation? Surely not everyone in Germany supports copyright. Do 51% of the voting people of the nation (fewer than 40% of the total) have the right to deny the rights of any person or group of people in the nation? But no one has the right to violate someone's rights, so how can this be? Do 25 million people collectively have the right to do something which none of them may do individually? Who is to carry out the violation of property rights, then? No individual has the right to do it.
Since no individual or group of individuals has the right to violate the right of any person, copyright cannot rightfully exist, because copyright, by its nature, is the denial of the right of property owners to do what they want with their property.
If you somehow persist in saying that the government of a nation has the right to enforce copyright, notwithstanding the property rights of individuals, then you must accept the logical result of that belief: government may do whatever it wishes, including violating any and all rights of individuals. In this case, you must accept that the US system of copyright is right. Not only that, but you must accept that every dictatorship in the history of the world was right. Like it or not, that is the logical consequence of allowing government to violate even one right of individuals. Either accept it and live with it, or change your assumptions and premises.
According to the Constitution of the United States of America, I have, for a limited time, an exclusive right to my creative works and inventions. This right can be sold and can be owned by a corporation. Microsoft has that right with Microsoft Windows. Microsoft also has that right under Chinese law.
The Constitution of the United States of America and Chinese law are both completely irrelevant to the question of rights. Law does not make right. Government does not grant rights. Rights either exist or they do not, completely irrespective of the dictates of any governmental organization which happens to claim authority over a given territory.
Property rights are an inherent part of being human. As humans, we have the right to the free use of our own property, only limited in that we may not use our property to violate the rights of another. Since you seem to have difficulty understanding this concept, I'll repeat: Government has no affect whatsoever on this situation.
Copyright is a government-enforced monopoly. It is not a right. You do not have the right to force me not to make 10 million copies, using my own property, of everything you write, or of utilizing an invention which you created, for my own benefit.
Now, please shut the fuck up before you make an even bigger fool of yourself, you fucking whiny bitch.
Wait... you attack Microsoft for its "theft", then you attack Microsoft for avoiding becoming a victim of theft by someone else. So which is it, is theft OK or not?
We can't all be tax-havens. It is only useful to small countries that can exist on the small transfer fees of enormous corporations from other countries.
Or the ones who spend less money oppressing their own citizens and taking over other countries.
If you are looking for outrage look to the individual taxpayer who doesn't report any cash based transaction. Business that do cash under the table.
If I were looking for outrage, I would not need to look any further than you.
Service employees who only report 10% of tips.
I wish they reported 0%. Even aside from the fact that taxes on employment income (or anything, for that matter) are evil, tips are not employment income. A tip is a private gift from one individual to another, typically given in appreciation for good service.
A study estimated that up to 40% of commerce in L.A. county is under the radar.
We can hope it's that high. I doubt it. Look, man, instead of attacking the innocent victims of government taxation who manage to save some amount of their own cash from theft, blame government for stealing in the first place. Stop supporting evil.
Why is it that outrage over tax-evasion is focused only on big corporations for exercising legal choices while your neighbour may be "cheating" the government out of thousands in taxes each year? If the millions of individual taxpayers actually had to pay what they were supposed to, you would see an immediate change in how government spends money. Cheating only makes the problem worse!
An immediate change? Yeah, they'd raise taxes again.
There are many types of socialists. Socialism is essentially the denial of private property rights. Taxes deny the victim's right to keep his own property.
Everyone who supports any form of taxes is a socialist.
You're misusing the Broken Window Fallacy. The fallacy only applies when there is an actual breach of rights or damage to property involved. In this case, there is no breach of Microsoft's property.
You say that as if they deserve anything other than what they got. They knew the risks, they knew the penalties (or should have), they got caught. Now, it is time for them to pay the price.
Maybe all you poor little whiners who cry every time someone is busted for violating other people's rights should imagine how you would like it if someone violated your rights. Oh, that is right, when someone violates the rights of FSF or the like, you want the book thrown at them.
What a bunch of whiny hypocrites you lot are.
What rights? You mean my rights to control how someone else uses his property? I don't have those rights. Neither do you, neither does Microsoft, and neither does the Communist Party of the People's Republic of China.
'Software piracy negatively impacts local economic growth,' explained Microsoft VP Fengming Liu in a celebratory New Year's Eve press release. But then again, so does transferring $16B of assets and $9B in annual profit to an Irish tax haven, doesn't it?"
Of course it doesn't. What an absurdity. The more money kept out of the hands of government thieves, the better. I can't condone their awful software, nor, what's far worse, their use of violent force (through support of governments) to attack, imprison, and fine innocent (of any real crime) copiers and users of software, but I wholeheartedly commend their efforts to keep some of their own money out of the hands of evil thieves.
Maybe that's the case in a profit-oriented system like in the USA. Other countries have evil socialist healthcare systems that mean that doctors have no incentive whatsoever to prescribe the most expensive treatment or to prolong your treatment unnecessarily, so they concentrate on doing their job properly instead.
Actually, socialism means that they have no incentive whatsoever to do their job. Moreover, just like in the social system we have in the USA, they have plenty of incentive to keep good treatment from patients when it's not the government-approved treatment.
Yeah, yeah, people keep saying that. In every thread that in any message board where anyone had declared "the year of Linux on the deskop", someone has tried to argue that "the problem with Linux" is that Linux developers are just trying to copy Windows. And the people making that argument always fail to include the same thing: a single idea on what different/new thing Linux developers are supposed to include.
Well, here's one thing Linux developers can do: don't eliminate useful features in favor of an application which looks more like MS Windows. KDE developers recently did just that with KDE 4. kcontrol was completely scrapped and replaced with a program with half the configurability and a less useful, more MSWindows-like interface, and even a name reminiscent of MS Windows -- "System Settings".
The whole thing hasn't shown itself to be particularly relevant anyhow. We've hit a bit of a dead-end. No one is coming up with any UI that doesn't amount to spacial metaphors and "windows" being navigated by a keyboard and mouse.
In case you didn't notice, we live in a spatial world. Humans are designed to interact spatially. Maybe that has something to do with it.
While we're at it, we may as well complain about our lack of flying cars and self-washing kitchens.
Exactly. The lack of flying cars was definitely copied from Microsoft Windows, too.
In case you haven't noticed, they already do fear-monger about global warming. And what they call "lax regulations", which in reality are oppressive government controls which just aren't oppressive enough for their tastes...
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Move to Somalia if you love taxes so much, the governments are free there and it's a breathtaking experience of pure, unfettered socialism!
Professionals don't need to get swayed by a lawyer's sweet talk. They're already on the side of the state -- against the defendant. Juries aren't, although I would not call one of those pathetic groups of hand-picked sheep we have today "juries". The problem is getting real juries who know what they're there for and know that they have the right and duty to judge the law itself, not just to determine whether the defendant violated the law as written. But the jury system in general at least has more potential for this than a "professional" system.
Freedom of speech and movements are rights; operating a motor vehicle is a privilege.
Where the fuck did you get that arbitrary distinction?
"Professionals" who have a vested interest in maintaining oppressive laws, rather than "laymen" who might possible have an interest in reducing government tyranny.
You prefer the "u" in honour, but what about the "e", "o", and second "e" in "people"?
In a sense, it's a scare tactic. "Just think what the world would be like without all these books, movies, etc.!" At best, it's Machiavellian: the ends justify the means. Stephan Kinsella (an attorney and author specializing in "intellectual property", international law, and Internet law) wrote in a September, 2000 article on Napster, utilitarianism, and the second homesteading principle:
First, even if a given policy could increase "net" wealth by redistributing property from A to B, that does not justify the policy. The goal of law is justice, not wealth maximization. B may be helped "more" than A is harmed by redistribution, but how does this justify the harm done to A? By the reasoning of utilitarians, we could not condemn every act of theft, rape, or murder; we would have to weigh the benefit to the thief, rapist, or murderer against the harm suffered by the victim, to determine whether or not the crime should be permitted. In cases where the aggressor enjoys his crime "more" than it harms the victim, it is not a crime at all, and should be permitted, since net wealth is increased. Clearly, this is a wholly immoral and unprincipled view.
If this fact were well understood, support for copyright, patents, and trademarks would be much lower than it is today. Hence the emphasis on using terms like "rights" and particularly "Intellectual Property", which pro-monopoly people and companies use to frame the debate on terms that are favorable to themselves. This is one reason it's important to avoid using such terms when discussing this type of enforced monopoly, except of course when critiquing the terms themselves.
Kinsella continues:
Finally, even if we set aside the problems of interpersonal utility comparisons and the justice of redistribution and plow ahead and employ standard utilitarian measurement techniques, it is not at all clear that IP laws do lead to an increase or decrease in overall wealth.(8) That is, it has not been demonstrated that the "costs" of copyright and other IP laws outweigh the benefits of such laws. Utilitarian analysis is thoroughly confused and bankrupt: talk about increasing the size of the pie is methodologically flawed; there is no clear evidence that the pie size is increased by IP rights; and in any event pie growth simply does not justify the use of force against the otherwise-legitimate property of others. For these reasons, utilitarian defenses of IP are not persuasive.
...
Not only is utilitarianism morally insufficient to justify property redistribution, but it is incoherent as well. As Austrian economists have shown, the utilitarian weighing of costs against benefits requires the impossible be done, namely making interpersonal utility comparisons, as when the "costs" of copyright laws are subtracted from the "benefits" to determine whether such laws are a net benefit. In short, there is no way to compare the benefit to B and the detriment to A of a given redistributionist policy, because values and disvalues have no cardinal magnitude. The reason for this is that values are subjective and ordinal, not cardinal.
As for the claim that without copyright, fewer works would be created, there's no solid evidence of that position. What we have seen is quite contrary. For example, the abundance of Free/Open Source software is a great argument against this position. It's not even true that free software authors never get monetary compensation for their works. Many companies hire programmers to improve existing free software projects. Neither is free sof
You may have said that you believe in rights granted by law, but your posts have betrayed the fact that you do not believe in rights at all, especially considering your admission that "law" only means whatever can be accomplished by force. Since rights are what may not (rightfully) be violated by force, a right which is only established by force is not a right at all.
You are the one violating people's rights.
What rights? You don't believe in rights, remember?
Just because you think you have a right to violate other people's rights, it isn't so. Now, please, shut the fuck up, you pathetic, ignorant git.
You really are good at giving advice that you need to take yourself. The fact is, you have no right to violate the rights of others. Those rights exist, whether you accept that fact or not.
Since you refer to the US Constitution, I'll quote from a document which the signers of the Constitution agreed with: the Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
The signers of the Constitution believed that rights were self-evident and unalienable. They denied your claim that rights are granted by government. Rights exist. Governments exist to protect rights. Government has no other valid reason to exist. That was the general opinion of the signers of the Constitution, and nothing in the Constitution suggests otherwise. The Bill of Rights speaks of rights which exist; it does not say "the people hereby have the right ...", nor "this document creates the right ...", nor "Congress shall grant the right ...".
What you are actually saying is that whatever happens is right, whatever anyone does is right, and that we cannot, a priori, say what is right or wrong. That is, you deny the existence of rights. A right, by definition, is something which noone may rightfully violate. You are disingenuous in claiming that government gives rights, when you don't even believe they exist.
The premise: An individual has the right to the free use of his own property, insofar as he does not violate the rights of someone else. No one has the right to violate the rights of someone else.
Given that premise, let's say that you own a house and the land it resides on, a blank journal book, a pen, and a copy of "The Pillars of the Earth" by Ken Follett, and that you have a neighbor next door, who lives in his own house. I think you will agree that a.) you have the right to sit in your house, b.) you have the right to give your blank journal book to your neighbor, c.) you have the right to give your pen to your neighbor, and d.) you have the right to give your copy of "The Pillars of the Earth" to your neighbor.
I assert that you have the right to sit in your own house and copy, word for word, "The Pillars of the Earth" into your journal. Another way of saying this is that noone has the right to stop you from copying the book. Further, you have the right to give your journal to your neighbor after you have finished copying every word of "The Pillars of the Earth" into it. Can you rebut this assertion without denying the premise stated above?
I believe that you cannot disagree with my assertion without making an additional assumption. The common statement of this assumption is: An author has the right to the exclusive copying of a book he has written.
You say that the protection of copyright is given by the people of the nation, rather than being an inherent or automatic right of the author. This opinion, it is true, is closer to the original idea of copyright. For you, let's restate the additional assumption as "the people of a nation have the right to prevent an individual from making a copy of a book written by another individual". I don't mean to mischaracterize your opinion -- would you agree that that is an accurate statement of an assumption you are making (or the logical consequence of another assumption, which makes no difference here)?
But who are the people of the nation? Surely not everyone in Germany supports copyright. Do 51% of the voting people of the nation (fewer than 40% of the total) have the right to deny the rights of any person or group of people in the nation? But no one has the right to violate someone's rights, so how can this be? Do 25 million people collectively have the right to do something which none of them may do individually? Who is to carry out the violation of property rights, then? No individual has the right to do it.
Since no individual or group of individuals has the right to violate the right of any person, copyright cannot rightfully exist, because copyright, by its nature, is the denial of the right of property owners to do what they want with their property.
If you somehow persist in saying that the government of a nation has the right to enforce copyright, notwithstanding the property rights of individuals, then you must accept the logical result of that belief: government may do whatever it wishes, including violating any and all rights of individuals. In this case, you must accept that the US system of copyright is right. Not only that, but you must accept that every dictatorship in the history of the world was right. Like it or not, that is the logical consequence of allowing government to violate even one right of individuals. Either accept it and live with it, or change your assumptions and premises.
According to the Constitution of the United States of America, I have, for a limited time, an exclusive right to my creative works and inventions. This right can be sold and can be owned by a corporation. Microsoft has that right with Microsoft Windows. Microsoft also has that right under Chinese law.
The Constitution of the United States of America and Chinese law are both completely irrelevant to the question of rights. Law does not make right. Government does not grant rights. Rights either exist or they do not, completely irrespective of the dictates of any governmental organization which happens to claim authority over a given territory.
Property rights are an inherent part of being human. As humans, we have the right to the free use of our own property, only limited in that we may not use our property to violate the rights of another. Since you seem to have difficulty understanding this concept, I'll repeat: Government has no affect whatsoever on this situation.
Copyright is a government-enforced monopoly. It is not a right. You do not have the right to force me not to make 10 million copies, using my own property, of everything you write, or of utilizing an invention which you created, for my own benefit.
Now, please shut the fuck up before you make an even bigger fool of yourself, you fucking whiny bitch.
You should have taken your own advice. Too late.
Wait... you attack Microsoft for its "theft", then you attack Microsoft for avoiding becoming a victim of theft by someone else. So which is it, is theft OK or not?
We can't all be tax-havens. It is only useful to small countries that can exist on the small transfer fees of enormous corporations from other countries.
Or the ones who spend less money oppressing their own citizens and taking over other countries.
If I were looking for outrage, I would not need to look any further than you.
I wish they reported 0%. Even aside from the fact that taxes on employment income (or anything, for that matter) are evil, tips are not employment income. A tip is a private gift from one individual to another, typically given in appreciation for good service.
We can hope it's that high. I doubt it. Look, man, instead of attacking the innocent victims of government taxation who manage to save some amount of their own cash from theft, blame government for stealing in the first place. Stop supporting evil.
An immediate change? Yeah, they'd raise taxes again.
Whatever you are, you are no socialist.
There are many types of socialists. Socialism is essentially the denial of private property rights. Taxes deny the victim's right to keep his own property. Everyone who supports any form of taxes is a socialist.
You're misusing the Broken Window Fallacy. The fallacy only applies when there is an actual breach of rights or damage to property involved. In this case, there is no breach of Microsoft's property.
You say that as if they deserve anything other than what they got. They knew the risks, they knew the penalties (or should have), they got caught. Now, it is time for them to pay the price.
Maybe all you poor little whiners who cry every time someone is busted for violating other people's rights should imagine how you would like it if someone violated your rights. Oh, that is right, when someone violates the rights of FSF or the like, you want the book thrown at them.
What a bunch of whiny hypocrites you lot are.
What rights? You mean my rights to control how someone else uses his property? I don't have those rights. Neither do you, neither does Microsoft, and neither does the Communist Party of the People's Republic of China.
No, the right thing to do is to destroy copyright completely, along with all other violently-enforced (i.e. by government) monopolies.
Of course it doesn't. What an absurdity. The more money kept out of the hands of government thieves, the better. I can't condone their awful software, nor, what's far worse, their use of violent force (through support of governments) to attack, imprison, and fine innocent (of any real crime) copiers and users of software, but I wholeheartedly commend their efforts to keep some of their own money out of the hands of evil thieves.
How many people had to die so this one child could have a reduced chance of getting breast cancer?
Maybe that's the case in a profit-oriented system like in the USA. Other countries have evil socialist healthcare systems that mean that doctors have no incentive whatsoever to prescribe the most expensive treatment or to prolong your treatment unnecessarily, so they concentrate on doing their job properly instead.
Actually, socialism means that they have no incentive whatsoever to do their job. Moreover, just like in the social system we have in the USA, they have plenty of incentive to keep good treatment from patients when it's not the government-approved treatment.
Yeah, yeah, people keep saying that. In every thread that in any message board where anyone had declared "the year of Linux on the deskop", someone has tried to argue that "the problem with Linux" is that Linux developers are just trying to copy Windows. And the people making that argument always fail to include the same thing: a single idea on what different/new thing Linux developers are supposed to include.
Well, here's one thing Linux developers can do: don't eliminate useful features in favor of an application which looks more like MS Windows. KDE developers recently did just that with KDE 4. kcontrol was completely scrapped and replaced with a program with half the configurability and a less useful, more MSWindows-like interface, and even a name reminiscent of MS Windows -- "System Settings".
The whole thing hasn't shown itself to be particularly relevant anyhow. We've hit a bit of a dead-end. No one is coming up with any UI that doesn't amount to spacial metaphors and "windows" being navigated by a keyboard and mouse.
In case you didn't notice, we live in a spatial world. Humans are designed to interact spatially. Maybe that has something to do with it.
While we're at it, we may as well complain about our lack of flying cars and self-washing kitchens.
Exactly. The lack of flying cars was definitely copied from Microsoft Windows, too.
You are fortunate in not losing data when your flash drive went through the washer/dryer -- mine died the first time.
In case you haven't noticed, they already do fear-monger about global warming. And what they call "lax regulations", which in reality are oppressive government controls which just aren't oppressive enough for their tastes...