Personally, its not my cup of tea. I'm more into my Linuxes working well than being 110% open-source. But that's just me, and that's why I use Mandrake and KDE.:)
In fact, a good question for the Debian people would be: Would you ever consider bundling a seriously closed-source package with the distribution? At what point would the ends (say, hundred of thousands of sales) justify the means for you guys/gals personally. Would you ever, if you'll forgive the tackiness of the phrase, sell your soul?
Its not great (there's the issue of flooding an ecosystem and disrupting water flow along the rest of a river's course) buts its a damn sight better than burning hydrocarbons. And I feel a lot safer living near the Sir Adam Beck hydro plants in Niagara than I did when I was living near the Pickering nuclear plant (Ontario, Canada).
For the record, I'd never live near a coal/oil plant. I'd never live off of a major highway or near a steel smelter for the same reason
Its a pity geothermal solar and wind-turbine aren't practical alternatives for most of the inhabited world. And not every area has access to an exploitable river for hydro (despite the ecological problems)
Coal/oil and nuclear are about the only power sources that can be deployed regardless of geography. I hope I'm around when that changes
That's a pretty good point. Nuclear fission -- if safely administered -- is a lot cleaner than coal or oil.
The problem seems to be that most nuclear installations are hamstrung by typical government silliness. Its one thing to have gaft, incompetence and corner-cutting and the local Ministry of Transport/Department of Motor Vehicles. Its quite another to do it at a nuclear plant.
Any Canadians here remember the "issues" with the Pickering facility in Southern Ontario:
The deuterium being flushed into Lake Ontario
the lead blanket that was left in the core area that melted and damaged the safety systems
The rather high instance of substance abuse (namely, the heroin-use needles in the garbage cans in the washrooms)
This sort of stuff scares me. How far off is Homer Simpson's work environment from reality? How do people in charge of these places sleep at night?
I'm all for nuclear power if its managed well. I believe France has a very well administered nuclear energy program -- there was an article in National Geographic a few years back that compared the American and French systems (and didn't do the Americans many complements)
Now that's just silly. Linux needs all the users (especially desktop ones) that it can get. Keeping it cloistered among experts won't help it at all.
If you want Linux to be better-accepted, get used to the gobs of new users asking questions. Microsoft didn't make itself the market-share leader by saying "well, if its ease of use you want, why didn't you get a Mac, stupid?" or "if you wanted something that didn't crash so much, why didn't you invest in a UNIX variant?"
If new, inexperienced users bother you, I'm sure there are other operating systems that might be better suited to your wants. You could try HURD, for example. (I'm serious -- I'm not taking a poke at HURD!)
I don't know if I'd like GNOME to win out in the end. The reason I chose KDE is because I like the fact that its a nice, simple, straightforward, easy-to-install-and-remove desktop. GNOME's focus seems to be on capabilities, features and technical achievement.
If I were a coder, I'd probably be more of a GNOME fan. I'm a sysdmin, though, and I find KDE does a better job of staying out of my way when I want to get work done.
I suppose (and I'm going out on a limb with this, so be nice) that it's a little bit like being a Mac (KDE) or Windows (GNOME) user. One platform has a better, more consistent UI, the other one is (Mac people, please be nice!) more feature-complete.
One thing that gets me about both desktops -- why do people who write apps insist on names starting with 'k' or 'g'. It gets really annoying trying to find one GNOME program when there a bazillion that start with 'g'. Kudos to the authors of stuff like Caitoo and Brahms.:)
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, there was a story on Slashdot a while back about RedHat doing just that -- releasing something called RMS/Linux.
Slashdot's story can be found here.
Personally, its not my cup of tea. I'm more into my Linuxes working well than being 110% open-source. But that's just me, and that's why I use Mandrake and KDE. :)
In fact, a good question for the Debian people would be: Would you ever consider bundling a seriously closed-source package with the distribution? At what point would the ends (say, hundred of thousands of sales) justify the means for you guys/gals personally. Would you ever, if you'll forgive the tackiness of the phrase, sell your soul?
Well, there's Hydroelectricity...
Its not great (there's the issue of flooding an ecosystem and disrupting water flow along the rest of a river's course) buts its a damn sight better than burning hydrocarbons. And I feel a lot safer living near the Sir Adam Beck hydro plants in Niagara than I did when I was living near the Pickering nuclear plant (Ontario, Canada).
For the record, I'd never live near a coal/oil plant. I'd never live off of a major highway or near a steel smelter for the same reason
Its a pity geothermal solar and wind-turbine aren't practical alternatives for most of the inhabited world. And not every area has access to an exploitable river for hydro (despite the ecological problems)
Coal/oil and nuclear are about the only power sources that can be deployed regardless of geography. I hope I'm around when that changes
That's a pretty good point. Nuclear fission -- if safely administered -- is a lot cleaner than coal or oil.
The problem seems to be that most nuclear installations are hamstrung by typical government silliness. Its one thing to have gaft, incompetence and corner-cutting and the local Ministry of Transport/Department of Motor Vehicles. Its quite another to do it at a nuclear plant.
Any Canadians here remember the "issues" with the Pickering facility in Southern Ontario:
- The deuterium being flushed into Lake Ontario
- the lead blanket that was left in the core area that melted and damaged the safety systems
- The rather high instance of substance abuse (namely, the heroin-use needles in the garbage cans in the washrooms)
This sort of stuff scares me. How far off is Homer Simpson's work environment from reality? How do people in charge of these places sleep at night?I'm all for nuclear power if its managed well. I believe France has a very well administered nuclear energy program -- there was an article in National Geographic a few years back that compared the American and French systems (and didn't do the Americans many complements)
You know, sometimes I think that Apple really had the right idea when they decided to use one (and only one) mouse button.
Especially in the light of this thread. :)
Now that's just silly. Linux needs all the users (especially desktop ones) that it can get. Keeping it cloistered among experts won't help it at all.
If you want Linux to be better-accepted, get used to the gobs of new users asking questions. Microsoft didn't make itself the market-share leader by saying "well, if its ease of use you want, why didn't you get a Mac, stupid?" or "if you wanted something that didn't crash so much, why didn't you invest in a UNIX variant?"
If new, inexperienced users bother you, I'm sure there are other operating systems that might be better suited to your wants. You could try HURD, for example. (I'm serious -- I'm not taking a poke at HURD!)
I don't know if I'd like GNOME to win out in the end. The reason I chose KDE is because I like the fact that its a nice, simple, straightforward, easy-to-install-and-remove desktop. GNOME's focus seems to be on capabilities, features and technical achievement.
If I were a coder, I'd probably be more of a GNOME fan. I'm a sysdmin, though, and I find KDE does a better job of staying out of my way when I want to get work done.
I suppose (and I'm going out on a limb with this, so be nice) that it's a little bit like being a Mac (KDE) or Windows (GNOME) user. One platform has a better, more consistent UI, the other one is (Mac people, please be nice!) more feature-complete.One thing that gets me about both desktops -- why do people who write apps insist on names starting with 'k' or 'g'. It gets really annoying trying to find one GNOME program when there a bazillion that start with 'g'. Kudos to the authors of stuff like Caitoo and Brahms. :)