"Come on, even the ancients knew that the tides were caused by the moon. Direct observation."
No, the didn't. They knew that there was a correlation between tides and moon phases but it was Newton the first one to give an explanation about it.
But my point was more to state the "giant slow waves" could explain a boat behaviour when reaching the horizon since "giant slow waves" were not unknown to the ancient world.
"The crime is that the poor people bought homes they KNEW they couldn't afford."
How is this a crime? Is it a crime the desire to own your home? Is it criminal to take the money from one that have the experience, the experts and the responsibility to make a savvy decision if he decides to give it to me?
I'd better say that it was banks the real criminals offering *other's* money in loans they knew there was no chance to recover.
"Everyone's opinion here - in essence - can easily be boiled down to "waah I hate the military so they shouldn't be able to recruit.""
I've been on the militia for some years (not it the USA; I'm not American) and I can say I found there not only mates but brothers. I found it a school of life and of high moral values but it doesn't mean that I approve for even a second fooling with a gameboy boys that almost don't save themselves yet. In different words, I'd be proud if a son of mine takes that path, but I would try to take the idea out of his head by all but dishonest means.
War -and the military as an extension, brings all that it is valuable out of human soul -out of necessity, as it brings out the miseries. It is -disgraciably, an unavoidable necessity, not a thing to fool people about, and honest and mature people know the difference. Do you really think is per chance that there was no need to resort to dishonest tricks to get good young people on, say, IIWW, but there were vast protests about Vietnam or some current recruting tactics? I don't think so.
"What is so hard to understand about this? The mall chose to remove a bunch of lunatics from their property. The lunatics refused to go, so police arrested them under the law for trespassing."
The hard part to understand is that it is THE FUCKING GOVERNMENT!!!
Nice to see that you would see sensible for a ballot house to be on a private property, therefor, while everybody (citizen, adult, etc.) has the right to vote, anyone could be rejected to vote because, you know, this's private property and I don't like how you look like.
"(the same military, might I add, that goes and fights and dies for their freedom to express their opinion and peacefully protest in the first place)"
More bullshit? It is not USA Army the one in charge to preserve peace and freedom within USA borders. So you do really think that killing some (more or less) random people half the world away equals to "figth and die for your freedom"? OK, that's your bet.
" I know, why don't I come over to your house and protest your stupidity by taking over you living room. After all, you should not be able to hide behind public property either."
Maybe because he is not "The Government"? You know, that little thing the Constitution fathers took the time to write about?
"I am too lazy to look it up, but I know that octane numbers in different countries vary because of different measuring standards."
It might be true but then it only makes my argument stronger.
"Since the same distribution equipment is used for both fuels"
I included refineries in the distribution chain, since usually they are domestic facilities. While they can be retuned for certain production levels they can't do it by night.
"the two most plausible theories I've heard are 1) just simple collusion and market manipulation to try to convince people not to buy diesels"
Again, I didn't stated what the root causes for such lack in distribution might be.
"the military is buying it all up and using it to kill mideasterners."
Doesn't seem to hold water: it is not as if such mideasterners were precisely lacking their own share of oil.
Both of you are wrong. There are "happy" portions where lowering taxes can increase incomes but it's obviously stupid thinking that such behaviour can be sustained from 0 to 100% taxing. The truth is that *given some constrains* (like having at least a semi-decent recaudatory system) and *within some limits* income *can* increase as taxing lowers.
"I guess a persons viewpoint on corporate taxations and regulation is based in part on perception, part on hearsay and part on belief."
But that doesn't mean there can't be sounder arguments than others.
"Should a corporation have the same rights as a citizen?"
Obviously not, since they are qualitatively different to a citizen: corporations don't naturally die, people do.
"Should the government favour corporations over individuals?"
Not in a democracy or a republic: corporations doesn't vote.
"And does low corporate tax mean a higher quality of life for citizens?"
Is red a better color than blue? Higher quality life depends on quite a lot of indicators at best and is subjective at worse, so there can't be a single factoid to answer that question.
"The goal, again in my view, should be to arrive at a tax, budget and economic policy that allowed the state to do all the things that are necessary"
And here your utopy ends, since you won't find a consensus about what "necessary" is.
"Though in this particular case I see only a Head of State trying to push for enforcing the laws and regulations that are already present."
That should be the truth in any case. You cannot have freedom when some part of the society is law-exempted. That's a classist society per definition.
"I have often come to a conclusion that the only way to maintain a Linux distribution with huge amount of packages is indeed to reinstall it every six months."
You are awfully wrong then, sir. I won't say that there are not distributions where the wisest strategy could be reinstall every some months (or following a major release) but I certainly can say this is not true for some other distributions. The one I'm using has been upgraded since about 2001 while not a single piece of this current computer is the same than at the beginning and my computer is not an exception: for systems I'm responsible they are usually upgraded for as long as the hardware is in service (I'm using Debian, for those curious enough).
"While I did mod you up, I wanted to note that in the US the only turbo diesels I've seen have been VW or Audi (the TDI models). I think there might be others coming, but they would be BMW or Mercedes (also not cheap). I do want an A3 TDI, but it will cost more than a Prius, have comparable MPG, and cost more to fuel (diesel is normally more expensive than 87 Octane)."
News you might find interesting: Europe is full of turbodiesels now; about 65-70% of all new tourism-class sells are diesels. Just for an example, the VW group fills the whole market: from the comparatively cheap Skodas to the top of the rank Audi R8 passing through Seat and VW offers; the same goes for all other brands: BMW, Mercedes, Jaguar, Saab, Volvo, Renault, Citroen, Fiat, Alfa... you name it. And they are now only just a bit more expensive instead of 25/30% more it used to be. I don't think there is 87 Octane gasoline in Europe but I can say diesel is cheaper than the "standard" 95~98 Octanes used here both per volume and per mileage so I think the higher price in USA comes from lack of distribution, not production costs. And they are as driveable and comfortable than their gasoline counterparts (the days of black fumes, noise and vibrations passed away).
If this market hasn't exploded in USA yet is because gasoline is quite cheaper and due to a matter of tradition.
"Well, i thought it followed logically that in the absence of a major current industry people would either have a lower standard of living or have to move to another location, but hey, sometimes it takes a bit of prodding to see the obvious conclusion."
Because that's not the obvious conclusion. This is not a case of 'tertio excluso', so it is not "this or that". In the absence of a major current industry, people would get to move, lower their current standard... or find a different cash cow. New York doesn't have coal mines but they don't go so bad economycally wise.
"Well, ideally the Bolivian government would negotiate the best price they could for selling off the lithium to foreign firms that hold a comparative advantage in producing batteries"
What you propose seems akind to sell the goose so others get the golden eggs.
"If foreigners had to buy lithium batteries from Bolivia that were much higher priced due to Bolivia's high cost of producing batteries en masse would depress demand for the lithium in the first place, leaving Bolivia no better off."
Bullshit. If the header is right, Bolivia would hold a near-monopoly comparable to that of middle east regarding oil so it hardly suffers the pressure of other producers taking away its market so they *will* sell their batteries almost no matter how high the price as much as Arabia is selling its oil almost no matter how high the price.
And while it's true that Bolivia holding such a grip on the market would depress demand at least for a while, till they get to speed, that would be bad for everbody else *but* Bolivia which even if it sells just one battery will earn more than with current status -not selling anyone, that is.
Eventually, being the major worlwide provider it will be Bolivia itself the one with "a comparative advantage in producing batteries" so in the end they will get the cake and eat it too which would never happen if they sell off that market for an easy start.
It is not as if it were the first time that South America tries the strategy of giving raw materials to foreign third parties to manufacture and I don't think they are glad with the remembrances.
"The best thing for Bolivia to do is to negotiate the best trade deal possible and take the gain from that deal and invest it in infrastructure and education making the Bolivian economy that much more sustainable."
That seems to me awfully shortsighted. While it's true that it would mean an easier and better start for Bolivia, they have the obligation to think not for a ten years timespan but fifty or even a century. There's no way they can squeeze an overall better deal by subcontracting than holding themselves the whole vertical market.
"The problem with the marketing geniuses at Miro is, they appears to be marketing to a very small niche of: 1) teenage 2) geek 3) girls 4) with low IQ."
Well, that seems to be exactly Hollywood's target and they are not doing so bad.
What's this? A "true Scotish" falacy? It's first time now that Red Hat is mentioned. Regarding specifically Debian vs Solaris, exactly what you achieve with Jumpstart is what you get with FAI or even with preseed (being preseed much easier). About ISVs, they are well and good... if I need what they offer. That's not the case in this instance.
"Well... Whether or not that happens aside, would everyone moving to a real RDBMS be such a bad thing overall?"
Surely not but don't think Oracle would seek that because "it is a good thing". It's my opinion that all big for profit software companies, specially once Microsoft showed the road go or will go into "dumbing down" their products, not only because that broadens their potential market but because the dumber the technician and decision makers in generl, the more important becomes marketing and the less the technical merits of the product (wasn't it Larry Ellison the one saying more or less that?). If you are already a big company this is a good thing for you.
"I admin several busy CentOS servers for my company [...] I WANT to do them one by one"
You wouldn't WANT it if they were hundreds instead of several (well, maybe you still would want it, but you wouldn't afford it). So if there's the slightest chance for your datacenter to grow, think big now better than tomorrow. If you think you are busy today, just wait and see when you have doubled the number of servers under your hood.
"Red Hat Network it has a list like "10 of your 12 systems are up to date" and you can see which systems need updating, which packages are available for install on them, and actually schedule those patches for install."
I recieve a mail in the morning from each machine with pending updates, and only if there're pending updates. While I don't schedule those, since I can install them "by hand" (well, automatically, through a script, but still not unattended) I don't have that functionally, but I know I easy could if the need arise.
" I do _not_ want you silently updating MySQL or HTTPD in the midst of production services, because the update process may introduce an incompatibility with the existing configurations"
You wouldn't need to worry about that if you used a distribution that took stability with any seriousness.
"especially if some fool has been doing things like installing CPAN or PHP modules without using RPM packages"
There's an old tool specifically developed for that situations: it's called "a 22 club". In all seriousness that's what policies are for. They shouldn't install anything you can't cope with (i.e.: they always should use RPM packages). That alone certainly won't avoid some fool to oversee it, but it will protect your ass when shit hits the fan: you broke it, you bring together the pieces.
"And heaven forbid that you have a kernel with local modifications and special patches for special hardware whose version number is exceeded by the next RedHa kernel, and it replace yours"
It can't happen if you know your trade. That's what the "extraversion" field is for; no worry that anything coming from Red Hat will exceed my 2.6.26-MyCompany_0.0.1 kernel version.
Since you are going to mandate "visual approval" there're no tools because it's trivially simple:
Install a local proxy in order to save bandwith (i.e.: apt-proxy). Install cron-apt so each box mails you in case of updates and tells you which are them. Run -on your own box (no need of repeated stuff), apt-listbugs against the offending packages. Run, maybe using some of the already mentioned "echoing" terminals, the desired updates.
If you want to go a bit more sofisticated, a less than ten lines script will read your list of packages from a file, one package name per line, once you approved them, and install them by ssh looping through the machines you provide on a different config file.
If you want to go even a bit more sofisticated, you force an "always automatic upgrades" policy but only from your own managed repo (which you in turn update following informations from respective security lists).
If you want to go really sofisticated, you use puppet or cfengine and push selectable upgradings out of an LDAP or database server.
Knowing which packages are installed on which machine is a matter of "dropping" the output of a remote invocation of magics like `dpkg --get-selections` or `rpm -qa` to a file which in turn you can massage through wc, sed and/or diff as you need.
But all in all, I would go with a distribution that will make easy to choose your upgrades. I.e.: selectable upgrades on Debian Stable? Easy: all of them (of course you use the "codename", not the tag, on your sources).
"Maybe that works for your home network, but SSH'ing to 25 or (maybe a lot) more different boxes to repeat the same task is a bit tedious."
Even for the more command line-disabled, konsole (and I'bet the Gnome version does this too) has the ability to "echo" commands to a series of tabbed terminals. Join this to key-based authentication for ssh and KDE's ability to remember your session and you are done, beating Windows even on its own, GUIfied field.
Now, of course, once you go beyond a dozen boxes you should rely on scripting (how much will it take you a simple for loop?) and/or centralized administration (puppet/cfengine).
"A few thousand highly intelligent and influential people who make billions of dollars based on decisions on where to move the industry think otherwise."
The fact that it is a wise movement *for them* to increase *their* profits doesn't immediatly make a wise decision for *you* to adopt.
Slashdot Mirror
"Come on, even the ancients knew that the tides were caused by the moon. Direct observation."
No, the didn't. They knew that there was a correlation between tides and moon phases but it was Newton the first one to give an explanation about it.
But my point was more to state the "giant slow waves" could explain a boat behaviour when reaching the horizon since "giant slow waves" were not unknown to the ancient world.
"I find that kind of attitude insulting"
OK, I accept your arguments. Next time that the need arises to take a hill we'll vote.
"I tend to agree that more obligations make you more of a wage slave."
But that won't make you more productive, only more sumise.
"The crime is that the poor people bought homes they KNEW they couldn't afford."
How is this a crime? Is it a crime the desire to own your home? Is it criminal to take the money from one that have the experience, the experts and the responsibility to make a savvy decision if he decides to give it to me?
I'd better say that it was banks the real criminals offering *other's* money in loans they knew there was no chance to recover.
"#3 - where are the currents from the flow of water over the edge of the world?"
They didn't fall through the border, you ignorant, since so far away to be seen mountains served as a barrier.
And that the water can wave without wind or any other obvious reason it's known to any seaman. We call it "tides" nowadays.
"I found it ironic that as a service member, I had less freedoms available to me."
You were in service to protect freedoms not to take advantage from them.
"Everyone's opinion here - in essence - can easily be boiled down to "waah I hate the military so they shouldn't be able to recruit.""
I've been on the militia for some years (not it the USA; I'm not American) and I can say I found there not only mates but brothers. I found it a school of life and of high moral values but it doesn't mean that I approve for even a second fooling with a gameboy boys that almost don't save themselves yet. In different words, I'd be proud if a son of mine takes that path, but I would try to take the idea out of his head by all but dishonest means.
War -and the military as an extension, brings all that it is valuable out of human soul -out of necessity, as it brings out the miseries. It is -disgraciably, an unavoidable necessity, not a thing to fool people about, and honest and mature people know the difference. Do you really think is per chance that there was no need to resort to dishonest tricks to get good young people on, say, IIWW, but there were vast protests about Vietnam or some current recruting tactics? I don't think so.
"What is so hard to understand about this? The mall chose to remove a bunch of lunatics from their property. The lunatics refused to go, so police arrested them under the law for trespassing."
The hard part to understand is that it is THE FUCKING GOVERNMENT!!!
Nice to see that you would see sensible for a ballot house to be on a private property, therefor, while everybody (citizen, adult, etc.) has the right to vote, anyone could be rejected to vote because, you know, this's private property and I don't like how you look like.
"(the same military, might I add, that goes and fights and dies for their freedom to express their opinion and peacefully protest in the first place)"
More bullshit? It is not USA Army the one in charge to preserve peace and freedom within USA borders. So you do really think that killing some (more or less) random people half the world away equals to "figth and die for your freedom"? OK, that's your bet.
" I know, why don't I come over to your house and protest your stupidity by taking over you living room. After all, you should not be able to hide behind public property either."
Maybe because he is not "The Government"? You know, that little thing the Constitution fathers took the time to write about?
"I am too lazy to look it up, but I know that octane numbers in different countries vary because of different measuring standards."
It might be true but then it only makes my argument stronger.
"Since the same distribution equipment is used for both fuels"
I included refineries in the distribution chain, since usually they are domestic facilities. While they can be retuned for certain production levels they can't do it by night.
"the two most plausible theories I've heard are 1) just simple collusion and market manipulation to try to convince people not to buy diesels"
Again, I didn't stated what the root causes for such lack in distribution might be.
"the military is buying it all up and using it to kill mideasterners."
Doesn't seem to hold water: it is not as if such mideasterners were precisely lacking their own share of oil.
"you're wrong, check laffer curve."
Both of you are wrong. There are "happy" portions where lowering taxes can increase incomes but it's obviously stupid thinking that such behaviour can be sustained from 0 to 100% taxing. The truth is that *given some constrains* (like having at least a semi-decent recaudatory system) and *within some limits* income *can* increase as taxing lowers.
"I guess a persons viewpoint on corporate taxations and regulation is based in part on perception, part on hearsay and part on belief."
But that doesn't mean there can't be sounder arguments than others.
"Should a corporation have the same rights as a citizen?"
Obviously not, since they are qualitatively different to a citizen: corporations don't naturally die, people do.
"Should the government favour corporations over individuals?"
Not in a democracy or a republic: corporations doesn't vote.
"And does low corporate tax mean a higher quality of life for citizens?"
Is red a better color than blue? Higher quality life depends on quite a lot of indicators at best and is subjective at worse, so there can't be a single factoid to answer that question.
"The goal, again in my view, should be to arrive at a tax, budget and economic policy that allowed the state to do all the things that are necessary"
And here your utopy ends, since you won't find a consensus about what "necessary" is.
"Though in this particular case I see only a Head of State trying to push for enforcing the laws and regulations that are already present."
That should be the truth in any case. You cannot have freedom when some part of the society is law-exempted. That's a classist society per definition.
"I have often come to a conclusion that the only way to maintain a Linux distribution with huge amount of packages is indeed to reinstall it every six months."
You are awfully wrong then, sir. I won't say that there are not distributions where the wisest strategy could be reinstall every some months (or following a major release) but I certainly can say this is not true for some other distributions. The one I'm using has been upgraded since about 2001 while not a single piece of this current computer is the same than at the beginning and my computer is not an exception: for systems I'm responsible they are usually upgraded for as long as the hardware is in service (I'm using Debian, for those curious enough).
"While I did mod you up, I wanted to note that in the US the only turbo diesels I've seen have been VW or Audi (the TDI models). I think there might be others coming, but they would be BMW or Mercedes (also not cheap). I do want an A3 TDI, but it will cost more than a Prius, have comparable MPG, and cost more to fuel (diesel is normally more expensive than 87 Octane)."
News you might find interesting: Europe is full of turbodiesels now; about 65-70% of all new tourism-class sells are diesels. Just for an example, the VW group fills the whole market: from the comparatively cheap Skodas to the top of the rank Audi R8 passing through Seat and VW offers; the same goes for all other brands: BMW, Mercedes, Jaguar, Saab, Volvo, Renault, Citroen, Fiat, Alfa... you name it. And they are now only just a bit more expensive instead of 25/30% more it used to be. I don't think there is 87 Octane gasoline in Europe but I can say diesel is cheaper than the "standard" 95~98 Octanes used here both per volume and per mileage so I think the higher price in USA comes from lack of distribution, not production costs. And they are as driveable and comfortable than their gasoline counterparts (the days of black fumes, noise and vibrations passed away).
If this market hasn't exploded in USA yet is because gasoline is quite cheaper and due to a matter of tradition.
"Well, i thought it followed logically that in the absence of a major current industry people would either have a lower standard of living or have to move to another location, but hey, sometimes it takes a bit of prodding to see the obvious conclusion."
Because that's not the obvious conclusion. This is not a case of 'tertio excluso', so it is not "this or that". In the absence of a major current industry, people would get to move, lower their current standard... or find a different cash cow. New York doesn't have coal mines but they don't go so bad economycally wise.
"Well, ideally the Bolivian government would negotiate the best price they could for selling off the lithium to foreign firms that hold a comparative advantage in producing batteries"
What you propose seems akind to sell the goose so others get the golden eggs.
"If foreigners had to buy lithium batteries from Bolivia that were much higher priced due to Bolivia's high cost of producing batteries en masse would depress demand for the lithium in the first place, leaving Bolivia no better off."
Bullshit. If the header is right, Bolivia would hold a near-monopoly comparable to that of middle east regarding oil so it hardly suffers the pressure of other producers taking away its market so they *will* sell their batteries almost no matter how high the price as much as Arabia is selling its oil almost no matter how high the price.
And while it's true that Bolivia holding such a grip on the market would depress demand at least for a while, till they get to speed, that would be bad for everbody else *but* Bolivia which even if it sells just one battery will earn more than with current status -not selling anyone, that is.
Eventually, being the major worlwide provider it will be Bolivia itself the one with "a comparative advantage in producing batteries" so in the end they will get the cake and eat it too which would never happen if they sell off that market for an easy start.
It is not as if it were the first time that South America tries the strategy of giving raw materials to foreign third parties to manufacture and I don't think they are glad with the remembrances.
"The best thing for Bolivia to do is to negotiate the best trade deal possible and take the gain from that deal and invest it in infrastructure and education making the Bolivian economy that much more sustainable."
That seems to me awfully shortsighted. While it's true that it would mean an easier and better start for Bolivia, they have the obligation to think not for a ten years timespan but fifty or even a century. There's no way they can squeeze an overall better deal by subcontracting than holding themselves the whole vertical market.
"The problem with the marketing geniuses at Miro is, they appears to be marketing to a very small niche of: 1) teenage 2) geek 3) girls 4) with low IQ."
Well, that seems to be exactly Hollywood's target and they are not doing so bad.
What's this? A "true Scotish" falacy? It's first time now that Red Hat is mentioned. Regarding specifically Debian vs Solaris, exactly what you achieve with Jumpstart is what you get with FAI or even with preseed (being preseed much easier). About ISVs, they are well and good... if I need what they offer. That's not the case in this instance.
"Well... Whether or not that happens aside, would everyone moving to a real RDBMS be such a bad thing overall?"
Surely not but don't think Oracle would seek that because "it is a good thing". It's my opinion that all big for profit software companies, specially once Microsoft showed the road go or will go into "dumbing down" their products, not only because that broadens their potential market but because the dumber the technician and decision makers in generl, the more important becomes marketing and the less the technical merits of the product (wasn't it Larry Ellison the one saying more or less that?). If you are already a big company this is a good thing for you.
"I admin several busy CentOS servers for my company [...] I WANT to do them one by one"
You wouldn't WANT it if they were hundreds instead of several (well, maybe you still would want it, but you wouldn't afford it). So if there's the slightest chance for your datacenter to grow, think big now better than tomorrow. If you think you are busy today, just wait and see when you have doubled the number of servers under your hood.
"Red Hat Network it has a list like "10 of your 12 systems are up to date" and you can see which systems need updating, which packages are available for install on them, and actually schedule those patches for install."
I recieve a mail in the morning from each machine with pending updates, and only if there're pending updates. While I don't schedule those, since I can install them "by hand" (well, automatically, through a script, but still not unattended) I don't have that functionally, but I know I easy could if the need arise.
The magic? cron-apt.
" I do _not_ want you silently updating MySQL or HTTPD in the midst of production services, because the update process may introduce an incompatibility with the existing configurations"
You wouldn't need to worry about that if you used a distribution that took stability with any seriousness.
"especially if some fool has been doing things like installing CPAN or PHP modules without using RPM packages"
There's an old tool specifically developed for that situations: it's called "a 22 club". In all seriousness that's what policies are for. They shouldn't install anything you can't cope with (i.e.: they always should use RPM packages). That alone certainly won't avoid some fool to oversee it, but it will protect your ass when shit hits the fan: you broke it, you bring together the pieces.
"And heaven forbid that you have a kernel with local modifications and special patches for special hardware whose version number is exceeded by the next RedHa kernel, and it replace yours"
It can't happen if you know your trade. That's what the "extraversion" field is for; no worry that anything coming from Red Hat will exceed my 2.6.26-MyCompany_0.0.1 kernel version.
Since you are going to mandate "visual approval" there're no tools because it's trivially simple:
Install a local proxy in order to save bandwith (i.e.: apt-proxy).
Install cron-apt so each box mails you in case of updates and tells you which are them.
Run -on your own box (no need of repeated stuff), apt-listbugs against the offending packages.
Run, maybe using some of the already mentioned "echoing" terminals, the desired updates.
If you want to go a bit more sofisticated, a less than ten lines script will read your list of packages from a file, one package name per line, once you approved them, and install them by ssh looping through the machines you provide on a different config file.
If you want to go even a bit more sofisticated, you force an "always automatic upgrades" policy but only from your own managed repo (which you in turn update following informations from respective security lists).
If you want to go really sofisticated, you use puppet or cfengine and push selectable upgradings out of an LDAP or database server.
Knowing which packages are installed on which machine is a matter of "dropping" the output of a remote invocation of magics like `dpkg --get-selections` or `rpm -qa` to a file which in turn you can massage through wc, sed and/or diff as you need.
But all in all, I would go with a distribution that will make easy to choose your upgrades. I.e.: selectable upgrades on Debian Stable? Easy: all of them (of course you use the "codename", not the tag, on your sources).
"Maybe that works for your home network, but SSH'ing to 25 or (maybe a lot) more different boxes to repeat the same task is a bit tedious."
Even for the more command line-disabled, konsole (and I'bet the Gnome version does this too) has the ability to "echo" commands to a series of tabbed terminals. Join this to key-based authentication for ssh and KDE's ability to remember your session and you are done, beating Windows even on its own, GUIfied field.
Now, of course, once you go beyond a dozen boxes you should rely on scripting (how much will it take you a simple for loop?) and/or centralized administration (puppet/cfengine).
"A few thousand highly intelligent and influential people who make billions of dollars based on decisions on where to move the industry think otherwise."
The fact that it is a wise movement *for them* to increase *their* profits doesn't immediatly make a wise decision for *you* to adopt.