I cannot understand this. If you (or your girlfriend) are breaking your ports that easily, either you're buying crap phones or you're putting them through some SERIOUS abuse. I've got a 7 year old phone in my pocket right now, and guess what? Nothing's broken. Not a single connector. And I do have a somewhat nasty habit of pulling the device from the nightstand to my bed by yanking on the charging cable....
Of all the devices I've ever owned, I've only ever had two ports break -- one was a USB port on the front of my desktop PC (actually, the port was fine, just the little plastic bit inside snapped off. A touch of superglue and it's good as new.) The other was the headphone jack on a first generation iPod nano, which died around two years ago. Did a frankenstein fix on that with a random Radioshack jack I had sitting around, and it still works fine too.
Never had any problems with that on, say, Mandriva 2010 (one of the few things I _didn't_ have problems with on Mandriva 2010...that was a terrible release...)
Hell, I don't even have any problems with that on Arch, which doesn't even have versions...
They better permanently put that thing in "airplane" mode or they've got problems! In case you missed the Mythbusters episode that thoroughly tested this, devices with RF broadcasting capabilities of almost any kind can make instruments spin and go generally crazy from even 25+ feet away. What stops it in reality is the EM and RF shielding in the cockpit door. See the problem? You bring an ipad into the cockpit, that plane's going down.
Huh? In the Mythbusters episode _I_ remember seeing on this, they had some monstrous frankenstein antenna hooked up to a PC spamming crazy amounts of EMF and got...a whole lot of nothing.
That's just scary. These pilots are being paid (I hope decent $$$) to get us from point A to point B safely, and if boredom is that big of an issue then it sounds like we don't really need pilots in the cockpit, and auto pilot can handle things.
IANAP, but it's my understanding that, in most cases, we _don't_ need a pilot. Until something goes wrong.
Exactly. There's absolutely no reason a public school should be requiring students to purchase something like that. Create a lending library for your own use for now; if you get enough, make it school-wide; and maybe eventually turn it into classroom sets.
When I was in highschool there were a couple classes that did require these calculators. But they were provided by the school. They had an engraved tag adhered to the back (which could probably have just been peeled off, but it helped a bit); 'property of [school district]' was carved into the case; and the teachers wrote down the serial numbers of which calculator was being used by which student. And students were required to pay for any that went missing. Very rare that any disappeared, though apparently they did once track down and retrieve one at a local pawn shop...
Ti-83's while useful they are only really good for 11th grade-12th grade students. Once you go to college they normally require the higher end calculators (If they still do so, I would except they may be using Matlab or Maple)
Just graduated last May, B.S. in Comp Sci from Penn State University so I took a fair bit of math and science -- and I can't remember a single math class that _permitted_ calculators in class, let alone _required_ them! As for sciences -- I think you were permitted something like a TI-34 if you REALLY felt better having it (they made a point of stressing that the exams were designed to be done without one), but nothing more advanced than that. Graphing calculators were strictly forbidden. Maybe if you're getting into some of the higher level physical sciences one might be helpful though; I wouldn't know.
Haven't touched a graphing calculator since highschool -- and those were loaned to the students by the school. In fact, I don't even own a calculator anymore unless you count the TI-34 that's been sitting somewhere at my parents' house since Freshman year....
The fact that schools require their students to purchase these things never ceases to amaze me. Seriously? A highschool requiring $100+ purchases by students for a single class? A university sure, but a highschool should be providing the students with any materials that are required.
Maybe it's because I grew up in a somewhat small university town with high income inequality (so the school district had enough money but a lot of poor students,) but for the few classes where we were actually required to have a graphing calculator (in a lot of the lower level classes they were banned) we were given one by the school for the year. No different than our textbooks or anything else -- they give you one at the beginning of the year and write down the serial number in case it gets lost/stolen (they apparently found, and retrieved, one from a pawn shop once from those serial numbers.)
Hell, even for the lower level classes they usually had a couple TI-34s laying around for students who didn't have one -- though those were usually loaned out for the class period rather than an entire year.
You forgot one that I would consider among the most important:
FACT: The feds have been proven to have arrested, detained and tortured people who were, at the time of their abuse, known to be innocent of the crimes they were accused of. (Anyone who is not familiar with this, spend some time on Google. Khalid El-Masri is a good example, though hardly the only one)
I can say from personal experience, as someone who graduated last May and just got a job, everyone I interviewed with reimbursed damn near everything related to travel. Shit I had one company book me a flight, hotel, a rental car, reimburse for meals, pay for gas to the airport...for an interview four hours away from home. If you're a coder, you're looking for a job that is more than an hour's drive away, and they aren't reimbursing you for expenses -- go look elsewhere.
I got a $2000 bonus when I joined my current job last June. Granted, they didn't call it a 'relocation allowance' but rather a 'signing bonus' -- the HR drones told us during orientation that they decided it was easier to just throw a few grand at everyone than try to reimburse for everyone's specific expenses. Especially since we were all coming from and going to sites all over the country. You have to give it back if you quit within three months though.
Of course, after taxes it wasn't quite $2k anymore, but it was still enough for first month's rent and security deposit...kinda bad for those of us like myself who were moving to places with higher costs of living (Rhode Island for me) but I'm earning $10k/yr more than some of the people I went through training with because of that, so I can't really complain...
Well, there you have it, being prepared means you're a terrorist. Somebody better go round up the Boy Scouts, wouldn't want those terrorists in training getting away...
The premise is to prepare for a zombie attack, correct?
"Suspicious activity" at military surplus stores includes making "bulk purchases" of "weatherproofed ammunition"
There are two constants when it comes to zombies:
You need to shoot them in the head, or it will be ineffective. The vast majority of people who buy ammunition simply aren't that good of a shot.
Regardless, there are always more zombies than bullets. Always.
You don't need to kill ALL the zombies; just the ones who get too close.
"night vision devices"
Aside from the specific problem of thermal imaging not working too well on the walking dead (who are likely ambient temperature), passive night-vision technologies are generally intended to be able to see in the dark without being seen yourself. I don't recall many examples of zombies being that reliant on their visual senses (assuming they even still have eyes).
So while it may be useless to find zombies, thermal imaging sounds PERFECT for locating other survivors. Also, you'll want to identify any hidden survivors before they see you if you're on the move lest they mistake you for a zombie.
Secondly, just because they don't need to see doesn't mean you don't. So what if your night vision also happens to be designed so it's harder to see you. What, we're claiming anyone who buys a product with extra features they may not need is a terrorist now?
gas masks.
A zombie hoard's main weapons are tenacity and numbers, not mustard gas and sarin. Zombie plagues tend to spread by fluid exchange (e. g. biting) rather than airborne agents.
Homeland Security wants us to prepare for zombies. These items don't seem to prepare one for zombies very well.
Isn't the standard story that zombies become zombies through some sort of virus? Could be airborne. Also, we have no way of knowing how effective various toxic gasses would be against the zombies themselves. Maybe the stockpile of teargas kept by the local PD will turn out to be a great zombie killer. Maybe if the infection gets too out of hand they'll start gassing them from airplanes. Or hell, you never know what kind of toxic chemicals might be in that abandoned warehouse you're thinking of taking cover in -- might want to throw a mask on while you check it out.
Maybe not the top priority items, but they certainly still have some uses....
The Gestapo doesn't ask if you are guilty. They decide, then torture you for information or just kill you. And if a second after they decided, they get proof from god that your innocent? No difference. THAT IS DICTATORSHIP.
Sounds a lot like what the US government did to the Guantanamo detainees. Shit, even the government admits a lot of those still being held are completely innocent, but they were still tortured; they were still (and are still being) detained; many of them did disappear for months (and perhaps some disappeared forever; we only know about the ones who were eventually released, often after being tortured, and sometimes after being tortured _while the secretary of state herself ordered their release_)
What's wrong with motivation through entertainment? It makes the act of preparing _fun_ rather than a chore. And yes, you may end up with slightly misguided priorities (putting shotgun and gasoline above food and water perhaps) but it's better than nothing at all. And if you carry the plan through entirely, you're going to have the right stuff no matter what priority you place on it -- because let's face it, even in movies 'food' is pretty high on the list of zombie survival necessities.
So...is it a bit silly? Sure. But if that's what it takes to motivate people, where's the problem? Why can't people have some fun while preparing for disaster?
They're probably in highschool and have to get on the bus by 6:30am....or elementary school, have to get on the bus at 7:30am and just want to have plenty of time to eat and shower....I think I was waking up between 5am and 5:30am when I was in highschool. Though rather reluctantly (three alarm clocks...one by my pillow, one at the foot of the bed, and one across the room -- and there were still times I slept through all three!)
When talking about the founding document of our country is enough to get you labeled as a possible "wrecker" then i think we can all agree the country has gone to shit.
Hate to tell you this, but that's not anything new. Unfortunately I can't recall the exact title of the book this story is from (something about the history of the First Amendment) -- it is from a published book with sources, but you'll just have to take my word on that. Or not, whatever.
Anyway, back during the height of the 'Red Scare', there was an IWW member (Industrial Workers of the World for anyone unfamiliar -- aka "wobblies") standing on a street corner doing nothing but publicly reading our own Declaration of Independence. After a few minutes, a police officer comes by and arrests him -- for doing nothing but publicly reading the US Declaration of Independence. Now, it just happened that he was doing this outside of an office building where the US Forest Service (IIRC) had some offices, and one of those workers happened to have his window open since it was a nice day out. This guy doesn't really sympathize with the IWW, but he sees this happening and is so outraged that he goes outside and picks up the reading where the other guy left off. And he got hauled off to jail as well.
So yea, reading the founding documents of our nation has been enough to get even government officials hauled off to jail for quite some time now, unfortunately....
Uhh, same could be said about the invasion by Britain (obviously, we started that war) and potentially 9/11. The only one I'm not sure about is Pearl Harbor.
Point being, 'you started it' doesn't seem to be a criteria for not landing on the GP's list...
I forked an open source project a while back...the Wikipedia page on that project mentions the fork, but has nearly nothing about the motivations behind it. People are even asking in the discussion page if anyone could expand on that section -- which I certainly could, but since there would be no citation for it, it'd get removed.
Not that the motivations for the fork were mine alone; but who better to comment on them than the person who actually initiated it?
Also, wifi doesn't work if you can't receive open signals from others. I mean, what you are proposing would be to make it illegal for a computer to scan for wifi networks. No network could broadcast it's SSID -- or, more accurately, it COULD but it would be illegal for anyone to receive that packet...so there would be no point. That would break a lot of things. No more walking into Panera or Starbucks or a hotel and connecting right to their network -- you'd have to get the network information off of some posting and manually input that into your computer. No more automatically connecting to your home network as you walk in the door -- your phone couldn't legally look for that SSID being broadcast (because it wouldn't know what SSID it was until it opened the packet, and if that packet came from any other router it would be criminal wiretapping.) No more seamless transitions between routers -- back when I was in college we had a wifi network that spanned the entire campus -- it was public wifi with a VPN required for access. I could start a download in one class, put my laptop (running) into its back and walk across campus and my laptop would automatically connect to each new wifi access point along the way, keep the VPN connected and continue the download. If it was illegal to receive publicly broadcast signals, it would be illegal for my computer to do that -- I'd have to manually reconnect to each router along the way.
So I spent an entire day configuring my wifi access ponit such that it was publicly accessible when I got my new internet service (pain in the ass with Verizon's router/modems -- like playing whac-a-mole; disable one type of security and it turns on another!) and you're saying it should be illegal for anyone to actually make use of that? That's the problem -- the counter-argument to this decision seems to be that intent is all that matters, but you can't possibly know that intent! Cellphones are different -- any packet coming from my router may be intended for you to receive. Any packet coming from my cellphone is obviously intended for the tower. Plus, aren't cell phones in licensed spectrum?
OK, I feel a bit out of place saying this to someone who's been running Linux twice as long as I have -- but have you tried a distro like Arch? I used to run Mandriva and was reinstalling the OS, with the kinds of changes you've mentioned, once or twice a year. It was a pain. Then I decided to give Arch a shot after hearing someone in our LUG raving about it.
Now? The only time I ever do a full system install is when I get a new PC. You can easily run an Arch system for the entire life of a PC without reinstalling and still be fully up to date. That also eases some of the constant interface changes.
Of course, I have no suggestion with the Gnome changes and such -- I've always been a KDE fan, and even the 3.5 to 4.0 jump wasn't a MASSIVE change to the usual operation -- flip a couple settings and you're pretty much back to normal (and it stays that way). 4.0 _was_ pretty rough when they first started pushing it, and I stayed on 3.5 for a while because of that, but it's quite stable and functional now. It's not even the functionality of Gnome that I dislike so much -- although I do prefer KDE on that area as well -- but mostly it's the artwork. It just feels like it's more of a toy than a real computer to me, but I suppose that's all personal preference.
Also, your problem with "Linux developers" not caring is just plain stupid. _You_ could be a Linux developer if you'd like.
I think this is kind of a 'tired old line' too. I mean, here we are talking about how to gain desktop market share, and we still have people talking about how everyone can be a developer. No. Not everyone can be a developer. Not everyone knows how to code; not everyone has time to learn how to code; not everyone has time to download, learn, and modify the source code for the software in question every time they have a problem. I mean, hell, I'm a _software engineer_ and I'm not going to screw with modifying the kernel. Of course, I also don't expect kernel developers to drop what they're working on because I'm having a problem...but if a large enough number of users are having a problem, they probably should.
That is not a problem with Linux though, it's a problem with Ubuntu. Just yesterday I was playing Command and Conquer through Wine on my KDE4 Arch system, and it left my screen in the low resolution (I think it was 640x480 -- whatever was used by old DOS games...). I had no problem switching back to native resolution through the GUI. Christ, I've been using Linux for nearly ten years and I couldn't tell you how to change the screen resolution from the command line -- I've never needed to.
Also, while that is certainly a problem, I don't think it's at all important to the vast majority of users.
Finally -- please let me know where "If you don't know the sudo command to switch the screen resolution, then it sucks to be you. Go back to windows," would be a "typical" response, so I can be sure to avoid it. I've heard a lot of people complain about this attitude, but I've never personally seen it -- short of people getting annoyed with others posting questions like 'my computer is broken. HELP ME!!11!111' and then getting pissed off when others try to ask them for more details on what exactly is wrong. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that sort of reaction never happens -- I'm sure it does -- but that's just what my experience has been.
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I cannot understand this. If you (or your girlfriend) are breaking your ports that easily, either you're buying crap phones or you're putting them through some SERIOUS abuse. I've got a 7 year old phone in my pocket right now, and guess what? Nothing's broken. Not a single connector. And I do have a somewhat nasty habit of pulling the device from the nightstand to my bed by yanking on the charging cable....
Of all the devices I've ever owned, I've only ever had two ports break -- one was a USB port on the front of my desktop PC (actually, the port was fine, just the little plastic bit inside snapped off. A touch of superglue and it's good as new.) The other was the headphone jack on a first generation iPod nano, which died around two years ago. Did a frankenstein fix on that with a random Radioshack jack I had sitting around, and it still works fine too.
Never had any problems with that on, say, Mandriva 2010 (one of the few things I _didn't_ have problems with on Mandriva 2010...that was a terrible release...)
Hell, I don't even have any problems with that on Arch, which doesn't even have versions...
They better permanently put that thing in "airplane" mode or they've got problems! In case you missed the Mythbusters episode that thoroughly tested this, devices with RF broadcasting capabilities of almost any kind can make instruments spin and go generally crazy from even 25+ feet away. What stops it in reality is the EM and RF shielding in the cockpit door. See the problem? You bring an ipad into the cockpit, that plane's going down.
Huh? In the Mythbusters episode _I_ remember seeing on this, they had some monstrous frankenstein antenna hooked up to a PC spamming crazy amounts of EMF and got...a whole lot of nothing.
http://dsc.discovery.com/fansites/mythbusters/db/transportation/cell-phones-interfere-plane-instruments.html
That's just scary. These pilots are being paid (I hope decent $$$) to get us from point A to point B safely, and if boredom is that big of an issue then it sounds like we don't really need pilots in the cockpit, and auto pilot can handle things.
IANAP, but it's my understanding that, in most cases, we _don't_ need a pilot. Until something goes wrong.
I have no hearing problems and I can rarely understand what's said over those PA systems either.....
Exactly. There's absolutely no reason a public school should be requiring students to purchase something like that. Create a lending library for your own use for now; if you get enough, make it school-wide; and maybe eventually turn it into classroom sets.
When I was in highschool there were a couple classes that did require these calculators. But they were provided by the school. They had an engraved tag adhered to the back (which could probably have just been peeled off, but it helped a bit); 'property of [school district]' was carved into the case; and the teachers wrote down the serial numbers of which calculator was being used by which student. And students were required to pay for any that went missing. Very rare that any disappeared, though apparently they did once track down and retrieve one at a local pawn shop...
Ti-83's while useful they are only really good for 11th grade-12th grade students. Once you go to college they normally require the higher end calculators (If they still do so, I would except they may be using Matlab or Maple)
Just graduated last May, B.S. in Comp Sci from Penn State University so I took a fair bit of math and science -- and I can't remember a single math class that _permitted_ calculators in class, let alone _required_ them! As for sciences -- I think you were permitted something like a TI-34 if you REALLY felt better having it (they made a point of stressing that the exams were designed to be done without one), but nothing more advanced than that. Graphing calculators were strictly forbidden. Maybe if you're getting into some of the higher level physical sciences one might be helpful though; I wouldn't know.
Haven't touched a graphing calculator since highschool -- and those were loaned to the students by the school. In fact, I don't even own a calculator anymore unless you count the TI-34 that's been sitting somewhere at my parents' house since Freshman year....
The fact that schools require their students to purchase these things never ceases to amaze me. Seriously? A highschool requiring $100+ purchases by students for a single class? A university sure, but a highschool should be providing the students with any materials that are required.
Maybe it's because I grew up in a somewhat small university town with high income inequality (so the school district had enough money but a lot of poor students,) but for the few classes where we were actually required to have a graphing calculator (in a lot of the lower level classes they were banned) we were given one by the school for the year. No different than our textbooks or anything else -- they give you one at the beginning of the year and write down the serial number in case it gets lost/stolen (they apparently found, and retrieved, one from a pawn shop once from those serial numbers.)
Hell, even for the lower level classes they usually had a couple TI-34s laying around for students who didn't have one -- though those were usually loaned out for the class period rather than an entire year.
Ah, here I was thinking I was discussing actions taken by our government in a discussion about why we may not be able to trust our government...
You forgot one that I would consider among the most important:
FACT: The feds have been proven to have arrested, detained and tortured people who were, at the time of their abuse, known to be innocent of the crimes they were accused of. (Anyone who is not familiar with this, spend some time on Google. Khalid El-Masri is a good example, though hardly the only one)
I can say from personal experience, as someone who graduated last May and just got a job, everyone I interviewed with reimbursed damn near everything related to travel. Shit I had one company book me a flight, hotel, a rental car, reimburse for meals, pay for gas to the airport...for an interview four hours away from home. If you're a coder, you're looking for a job that is more than an hour's drive away, and they aren't reimbursing you for expenses -- go look elsewhere.
I got a $2000 bonus when I joined my current job last June. Granted, they didn't call it a 'relocation allowance' but rather a 'signing bonus' -- the HR drones told us during orientation that they decided it was easier to just throw a few grand at everyone than try to reimburse for everyone's specific expenses. Especially since we were all coming from and going to sites all over the country. You have to give it back if you quit within three months though.
Of course, after taxes it wasn't quite $2k anymore, but it was still enough for first month's rent and security deposit...kinda bad for those of us like myself who were moving to places with higher costs of living (Rhode Island for me) but I'm earning $10k/yr more than some of the people I went through training with because of that, so I can't really complain...
Well, there you have it, being prepared means you're a terrorist. Somebody better go round up the Boy Scouts, wouldn't want those terrorists in training getting away...
The premise is to prepare for a zombie attack, correct?
"Suspicious activity" at military surplus stores includes making "bulk purchases" of "weatherproofed ammunition"
There are two constants when it comes to zombies:
You don't need to kill ALL the zombies; just the ones who get too close.
"night vision devices"
Aside from the specific problem of thermal imaging not working too well on the walking dead (who are likely ambient temperature), passive night-vision technologies are generally intended to be able to see in the dark without being seen yourself. I don't recall many examples of zombies being that reliant on their visual senses (assuming they even still have eyes).
So while it may be useless to find zombies, thermal imaging sounds PERFECT for locating other survivors. Also, you'll want to identify any hidden survivors before they see you if you're on the move lest they mistake you for a zombie.
Secondly, just because they don't need to see doesn't mean you don't. So what if your night vision also happens to be designed so it's harder to see you. What, we're claiming anyone who buys a product with extra features they may not need is a terrorist now?
gas masks.
A zombie hoard's main weapons are tenacity and numbers, not mustard gas and sarin. Zombie plagues tend to spread by fluid exchange (e. g. biting) rather than airborne agents.
Homeland Security wants us to prepare for zombies. These items don't seem to prepare one for zombies very well.
Isn't the standard story that zombies become zombies through some sort of virus? Could be airborne. Also, we have no way of knowing how effective various toxic gasses would be against the zombies themselves. Maybe the stockpile of teargas kept by the local PD will turn out to be a great zombie killer. Maybe if the infection gets too out of hand they'll start gassing them from airplanes. Or hell, you never know what kind of toxic chemicals might be in that abandoned warehouse you're thinking of taking cover in -- might want to throw a mask on while you check it out.
Maybe not the top priority items, but they certainly still have some uses....
The Gestapo doesn't ask if you are guilty. They decide, then torture you for information or just kill you. And if a second after they decided, they get proof from god that your innocent? No difference. THAT IS DICTATORSHIP.
Sounds a lot like what the US government did to the Guantanamo detainees. Shit, even the government admits a lot of those still being held are completely innocent, but they were still tortured; they were still (and are still being) detained; many of them did disappear for months (and perhaps some disappeared forever; we only know about the ones who were eventually released, often after being tortured, and sometimes after being tortured _while the secretary of state herself ordered their release_)
What's wrong with motivation through entertainment? It makes the act of preparing _fun_ rather than a chore. And yes, you may end up with slightly misguided priorities (putting shotgun and gasoline above food and water perhaps) but it's better than nothing at all. And if you carry the plan through entirely, you're going to have the right stuff no matter what priority you place on it -- because let's face it, even in movies 'food' is pretty high on the list of zombie survival necessities.
So...is it a bit silly? Sure. But if that's what it takes to motivate people, where's the problem? Why can't people have some fun while preparing for disaster?
They're probably in highschool and have to get on the bus by 6:30am....or elementary school, have to get on the bus at 7:30am and just want to have plenty of time to eat and shower....I think I was waking up between 5am and 5:30am when I was in highschool. Though rather reluctantly (three alarm clocks...one by my pillow, one at the foot of the bed, and one across the room -- and there were still times I slept through all three!)
When talking about the founding document of our country is enough to get you labeled as a possible "wrecker" then i think we can all agree the country has gone to shit.
Hate to tell you this, but that's not anything new. Unfortunately I can't recall the exact title of the book this story is from (something about the history of the First Amendment) -- it is from a published book with sources, but you'll just have to take my word on that. Or not, whatever.
Anyway, back during the height of the 'Red Scare', there was an IWW member (Industrial Workers of the World for anyone unfamiliar -- aka "wobblies") standing on a street corner doing nothing but publicly reading our own Declaration of Independence. After a few minutes, a police officer comes by and arrests him -- for doing nothing but publicly reading the US Declaration of Independence. Now, it just happened that he was doing this outside of an office building where the US Forest Service (IIRC) had some offices, and one of those workers happened to have his window open since it was a nice day out. This guy doesn't really sympathize with the IWW, but he sees this happening and is so outraged that he goes outside and picks up the reading where the other guy left off. And he got hauled off to jail as well.
So yea, reading the founding documents of our nation has been enough to get even government officials hauled off to jail for quite some time now, unfortunately....
Uhh, same could be said about the invasion by Britain (obviously, we started that war) and potentially 9/11. The only one I'm not sure about is Pearl Harbor.
Point being, 'you started it' doesn't seem to be a criteria for not landing on the GP's list...
I forked an open source project a while back...the Wikipedia page on that project mentions the fork, but has nearly nothing about the motivations behind it. People are even asking in the discussion page if anyone could expand on that section -- which I certainly could, but since there would be no citation for it, it'd get removed.
Not that the motivations for the fork were mine alone; but who better to comment on them than the person who actually initiated it?
Also, wifi doesn't work if you can't receive open signals from others. I mean, what you are proposing would be to make it illegal for a computer to scan for wifi networks. No network could broadcast it's SSID -- or, more accurately, it COULD but it would be illegal for anyone to receive that packet...so there would be no point. That would break a lot of things. No more walking into Panera or Starbucks or a hotel and connecting right to their network -- you'd have to get the network information off of some posting and manually input that into your computer. No more automatically connecting to your home network as you walk in the door -- your phone couldn't legally look for that SSID being broadcast (because it wouldn't know what SSID it was until it opened the packet, and if that packet came from any other router it would be criminal wiretapping.) No more seamless transitions between routers -- back when I was in college we had a wifi network that spanned the entire campus -- it was public wifi with a VPN required for access. I could start a download in one class, put my laptop (running) into its back and walk across campus and my laptop would automatically connect to each new wifi access point along the way, keep the VPN connected and continue the download. If it was illegal to receive publicly broadcast signals, it would be illegal for my computer to do that -- I'd have to manually reconnect to each router along the way.
So I spent an entire day configuring my wifi access ponit such that it was publicly accessible when I got my new internet service (pain in the ass with Verizon's router/modems -- like playing whac-a-mole; disable one type of security and it turns on another!) and you're saying it should be illegal for anyone to actually make use of that? That's the problem -- the counter-argument to this decision seems to be that intent is all that matters, but you can't possibly know that intent! Cellphones are different -- any packet coming from my router may be intended for you to receive. Any packet coming from my cellphone is obviously intended for the tower. Plus, aren't cell phones in licensed spectrum?
OK, I feel a bit out of place saying this to someone who's been running Linux twice as long as I have -- but have you tried a distro like Arch? I used to run Mandriva and was reinstalling the OS, with the kinds of changes you've mentioned, once or twice a year. It was a pain. Then I decided to give Arch a shot after hearing someone in our LUG raving about it.
Now? The only time I ever do a full system install is when I get a new PC. You can easily run an Arch system for the entire life of a PC without reinstalling and still be fully up to date. That also eases some of the constant interface changes.
Of course, I have no suggestion with the Gnome changes and such -- I've always been a KDE fan, and even the 3.5 to 4.0 jump wasn't a MASSIVE change to the usual operation -- flip a couple settings and you're pretty much back to normal (and it stays that way). 4.0 _was_ pretty rough when they first started pushing it, and I stayed on 3.5 for a while because of that, but it's quite stable and functional now. It's not even the functionality of Gnome that I dislike so much -- although I do prefer KDE on that area as well -- but mostly it's the artwork. It just feels like it's more of a toy than a real computer to me, but I suppose that's all personal preference.
Also, your problem with "Linux developers" not caring is just plain stupid. _You_ could be a Linux developer if you'd like.
I think this is kind of a 'tired old line' too. I mean, here we are talking about how to gain desktop market share, and we still have people talking about how everyone can be a developer. No. Not everyone can be a developer. Not everyone knows how to code; not everyone has time to learn how to code; not everyone has time to download, learn, and modify the source code for the software in question every time they have a problem. I mean, hell, I'm a _software engineer_ and I'm not going to screw with modifying the kernel. Of course, I also don't expect kernel developers to drop what they're working on because I'm having a problem...but if a large enough number of users are having a problem, they probably should.
That is not a problem with Linux though, it's a problem with Ubuntu. Just yesterday I was playing Command and Conquer through Wine on my KDE4 Arch system, and it left my screen in the low resolution (I think it was 640x480 -- whatever was used by old DOS games...). I had no problem switching back to native resolution through the GUI. Christ, I've been using Linux for nearly ten years and I couldn't tell you how to change the screen resolution from the command line -- I've never needed to.
Also, while that is certainly a problem, I don't think it's at all important to the vast majority of users.
Finally -- please let me know where "If you don't know the sudo command to switch the screen resolution, then it sucks to be you. Go back to windows," would be a "typical" response, so I can be sure to avoid it. I've heard a lot of people complain about this attitude, but I've never personally seen it -- short of people getting annoyed with others posting questions like 'my computer is broken. HELP ME!!11!111' and then getting pissed off when others try to ask them for more details on what exactly is wrong. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that sort of reaction never happens -- I'm sure it does -- but that's just what my experience has been.