The fact is competition occurs very poorly sometimes without some kind of moderation. Without police officers, without traffic cops, without referees, sometimes businesses will have the balls to take a bat to the knee of their competition. They're called monopolies. It is not fair to call every business tactic fair, but that's what libertarians try to suggest. What ends up happening is these businesses end up increasing the barrier to entry to market so high that no one can even begin to compete unless they pull magic mega money from their ass and create an entire parallel infrastructure. It becomes the rich who are the only ones who can actually do anything, and because of it the rich get richer and poor get poorer.
That's the way it should be. If ISPs want to charge for so much data or so much speed, that's fine, but there should be no penalties or bonuses for connecting to specific servers.
Right, 100% in either direction is not the answer, it's whatever is best for the consumer that should be thought of. Look at the market and ask important questions like why isn't there more competition, why do most consumers only have two choices of broadband, is there anything we can do to make the playing field more level so that startups can get in there and compete too.
History has shown that too much regulation can be bad, and deregulation can lead to less competition and be bad too. In that case obviously neither of those are desirable.
Erm right, actually my argument meant that those were temporary things that Microsoft simply outright paid for. Doesn't mean real adoption took place or that those companies will continue to push Microsoft's version, but we'll see. Let the competition begin. ^^
No, it'd be a very nice feature, but if you don't care about it then go elsewhere. I'd like my repository to be all of Sourceforge and for more game companies as well as everyone else to be able to target Linux by using packaging standards. I know first hand how annoying it is for Linux users to try to install something that only comes as a source package because of the Linux packaging mess. So, don't tell me it's not a problem. All Linux users would play outside their walled gardens now and then if it was actually easy to share programs.
Cherry-picking is the point of news sites though. They felt that those points were news worthy, and you disagree and that's fine. I have to say though, there's certainly truth behind the value of OSS racing to zero. The only thing you can do really is make money on paid programming or support, and on trying to squeeze the freedom in some way from your customers so that you are seen as being a necessity. But, the reality that the software is free and that users want freedom, so they don't want to have to rely upon you, keeps setting in, forcing you to develop more and give more perks and hope that, well, freedom doesn't catch up with you, because then you're not needed. Fortunately, there's hopefully no end to the amount of features you can pile into a program, and there will always be some work to be found for paid programming/support.
Don't get me wrong, I like community-driven software and it will only get more and more common and I think the future could be driven by it 100% basically, once creating software is as easy as drawing a picture and anyone can slap it together (check out the Blender game engine, it rocks! Here's some links.). But, until then, and until computers can read your mind to create for you what you want, there will be a gap that paid programming can take advantage of. That, and advertising will continue to be a revenue stream.
Oh, and yes, I know you can still make money off of art even and the creation of content regardless of how difficult it was to create, but even that I think is something that becomes more and more difficult as the free sharing pool increases and continues applying a constant pressure, making your work have to become even better and better in order to get any money from it. Obviously making something easier to do decreases it's value and cost.
Yeah, that was pretty off-topic, I know, but still interesting to think about. ^^
Red Hat is simply Fedora stable of course with some extra non-free software thrown in. It would be nice if Red Hat released their own stable version instead of letting CentOS do that, but I guess they just don't care to. Where's the problem though? Just download CentOS? Yes, it's silly that it's on a separate website, but, I don't see why that's such a huge deal to you.
...instead of releasing RPMs and having to support a single distro, software programmers would be free to release one type that was supported by all distros. That cross-distro format may actually be RPMs, but until at least one format is made compatible with all the major package managers, life will continue to be hell for Linux users. The number of websites offering Linux source code only, or straight-up boring binaries so that there are no automatic updates with the user's system updates, is very high because of this, and Linux adoption will continue to creep until this feature among others is added. Yes, believe it or not, you could have one format that has enough metadata to satisfy the requirements of being successfully installed on any system, leaving the package managers to do whatever they wants with the package.
With Linux users loving to talk about document, web, graphics, and other standards, it's a real shame that doing something as important as allowing developers to target a single Linux packaging format, and making it easy for users to enjoy their software freedom, isn't a higher priority.
To add to that, more specifically, OOXML has holes which allow dependency on things which are not open. OOXML is not a truly open and functional standard, it's just crap. ODF actually is a functional standard is it does not have the holes in it that OOXML does and cannot and will not be controlled in any way other than through the committee. As Bhaki pointed out, the committee is open, or should be, and hopefully will remain that way though there's a lot of speculation around that and ISO in general right now, but even if they tried to ruin ODF, it could be forked and maintained by a different standards body. OOXML? It's maintained by Microsoft as far as I know as they have stacked the board which maintains it.
But, you know, whatever is truly open and a good standard, those are the things that will actually get implemented by programs and will become actual standards, while the formats and systems which aren't truly unfettered standards will wither and die off.
Well good for them then, I guess, they can use Microsoft's software stack to develop programs that will hopefully be and stay cross-platform and function well, and we'll let competition happen where it will. I simply believe that because of the anti-Linux stance of Microsoft, because of their patent threats and their closed source and controlling nature they have on everything, that because, quite frankly, they are assholes who have no interest in seeing Linux be successful but merely wish to extend their empire, I don't trust them and I don't think anyone should, that's all. I will stay away from anything Microsoft which is proprietary and closed down, which everything has been so far. Even the stuff like OOXML if it wasn't controlled directly is controlled indirectly by relying on and making calls to stuff that is controlled. None of their crap is actually uncontrolled, and they don't care about severing that control because it's all a stunt to try to stretch their control into the Linux universe which they have said repeatedly is a big threat to them. If you want to buy their snake oil though go ahead, there are a lot of languages out there which are available on Linux and that don't depend on a single company for their sugar daddy because they're actually, you know, open.
Use OpenGL and Python, C, C++, Java, or something else instead which is actually open source, you don't need.NET scripts to make a program function in a cross-platform environment.
And they are, and that's great, but both solutions are still of course proprietary. What is needed is an open standard for SVG manipulation. If I had to choose between Adobe and Microsoft, I'd choose Adobe, not just because I'd trust them better but because I know the Microsoft "non-official" implementations will always be horribly broken because they want to push their OS platform. Mono and Moonlight will try their best to implement all the Windows API calls they can, but there will always be holes, so things will always be broken and not quite as good as on native Windows using the "1st party" Silverlight implementation.
They control the format. Wake up and smell the coffee everyone. Or Mt. Dew or Dr. Pepper...whatever floats your boat. I'd expect Adobe to be the first one to open up more if I had to place my bet.
The Olympics used Silverlight to stream video and managed 8 million downloads per day of the Olympics. The Democratic National Convention streamed videos via Silverlight. So did Major League Baseball until next season. Estimates of Silverlight users are between 15% and 20%, which means that it has a significantly larger install base than that of Linux and NetBSD combined.
Also, news flash for you, Microsoft supposedly has billions of dollars. They paid those sites money to try to push their Silverlight advertisements, like they've done so many times before with so many other things. It was nothing more, nothing less.
That's not natural adoption. Real adoption is when you willingly use something because it's what your users/customers actually want.
Funny because no one cares about Mono or Moonlight except the Novell employees that are getting paid by Microsoft to develop them. It's a closed, proprietary standard that will always straggle behind the "official" Microsoft versions when running on their own Windows platform. Just like OOXML and all the other ways they've tried to E.E.E. everything in the past.
I'm glad Adobe has some competition now, but the answer is definitely not another proprietary format, especially not one that's completely loaded with holes and Windows API calls and basically require the entire Windows software stack to run it correctly in every instance, no thanks.
What's needed are open standards, not half-assed open implementations of closed formats.
Exactly. Just like OOXML, any implementations other than their own will straggle along behind them, never quite implementing everything "as good as the '1st party' version on Windows". They leave holes open so they can extend whatever closed or proprietary or patented feature they want that is exclusive to Windows in there, so Mono and Moonlight will always be the "sucky versions".
"Oh, that Silverlight animation isn't playing on your computer? I guess that's just because your OS sucks, it works fine for me on Windows, you should upgrade!"
I'm glad Flash and Adobe have more competition now, even if it's another proprietary format, but what's needed are open standards that aren't completely tied to and controlled by single companies, but of course that's the way they want it. I'd like to see the W3C implement an open standard for SVG manipulation. Perhaps eventually one of these two companies will end up opening up completely and one of them will become an open standard, if I had to guess I'd pick Adobe to be the first to get there, but I'm definitely not holding my breath just yet.
It doesn't matter what communication difficulties you had, the fact remains that it's a proprietary standard, not an open one, and that's all that matters. It doesn't matter at all if the implementations are open source or not. If the standard is controlled, it's not open, and players/creators shouldn't have to play catch up with trying to figure out what in the hell is going on, and suffering with all kinds of breakage along the way. Mono and Moonlight will never be as good to use because, just like OOXML, they are broken proprietary standards that try to pretend they are open. They purposefully leave holes open so that closed, patented technology can be inserted and will always fuxxor things up so that any implementation other than their own will fail.
"Oh, that Silverlight animation isn't playing on your computer? I guess that's just because your OS sucks, it works fine for me on Windows, you should upgrade!"
Unless you're using Windows and the latest version of everything, things will eventually fail, and that's how E.E.E. works. Even when you are using their own stuff on their own platform, they sometimes fail there too.
We want open standards, is what we want, we don't care about the actual software implementation. Both Adobe and Microsoft are using closed standards. They don't want anyone else making software for their proprietary standards because they want you using their own implementations. Having an open standard would actually mean easy access for any and all software to implement it, and encoders/decoders wouldn't have to be playing a reverse engineering game of catchup.
The W3C needs to develop an open standard for displaying and manipulating SVG in browsers to allow implementation to be easy.
WMV, H.264, and other codecs are also proprietary formats. The fact that x264 and Xvid and others exist and are open source doesn't change the fact that they are still controlled and patented video codecs. We want actual open systems which are not encumbered by anything, i.e. neither Adobe nor Microsoft can control. Unless those companies completely open up, or until an actual open standard comes about, users will be chained to these two companies, which is what they want.
Sure, it's good that Adobe finally has competition, now there are two proprietary standards which is better than one. Still though, an open standard is ultimately needed.
I'm pretty sure they meant open standards of course, to go back to what the parent said. Standards which are non-proprietary. Adobe makes money from Flash by selling Flash creation software. That will only change with more competition, so I'm glad Silverlight is around to do that, but both are still proprietary.
We, as internet users everywhere, regardless of operating system, want open standards. Standards which can be used with any software, both decoders/players and encoders/creators, and not be controlled or limited in any way except by the specification of the standard, and even that should not be limiting in that it should allow for new features to come about later.
Neither Adobe nor Microsoft make it easy for making encoders or decoders interoperable with their closed standards, because they want everyone using their software, and that's why we want standards that are truly open.
Close. Most people are using Windows XP (68.11%) and most of the rest are using Windows Vista (19.29%). Behind that are the Intel-based Mac users (5.94%).
Just, randomly stepping in here but, I'm quite sure that all the huge difficulties in measuring market penetration makes using things like decimal points pretty much useless and retarded.
Sorry, I meant I agree with you to a degree. Oiy. >.
I do mostly like Gnome's layout though, a lot of things about it any way. I like the menu system (Apps, Places, System) a billion times better than the Windows or other menu systems.
But seriously, yes I agree with you do agree, and any features on whatever level, even power user features, should still be created but be available as plug-ins if "normal" users to care to have them "clutter" up the desktop. I think there are always ways around that though, like just having an advanced menu that hides all the "power tools".
As long as you program intelligently and make everything modular, you can just turn on whatever features in the GUI. Gnome and all Linux programmers definitely need to listen to more user feedback. Some are, some aren't, the ones that won't will die off I guess or just stay niche.
I think the real reason as to why there is so much fail there and with most economic or socialistic ideas is because there is no purely right or wrong answer. There's bad, worse, good, decent, OK, and all sorts of shades of gray, but I don't think there's a 100% horrible or good system. I think you can have systems which are structured so that a very liberal system "works" to some degree, and systems which are structured so that a very socialistic system "works" to some degree, but ultimately both may come with certain benefits and problems, so like you said perhaps the best may be some kind of balance.
I think the problem with extreme libertarianism is that it basically challenges all laws. Oh, you think universal health care isn't needed, well what about the fire and police? Oh, those aren't needed either, so is there any use for government whatsoever in a libertarian society? If everything will somehow run itself and nothing is needed, then what's the point of any kind of government, it should be all run by corporations. Yes, because I'm sure corporations will take really good care of everyone. I'm sure that there will be no pollution, thefts, fires, murders, rotten food being sold, and that everyone will be healthy and happy citizens.
Like you said, I think it all boils down to the fact that greed exists because assholes exist. If your idea of a good country is one living inside a bunker you built with a munition stockpile trying to defend yourself because you didn't have enough money to pay off the "police force" (mafia) to protect you, I don't wanna know what you think a bad one would be like.
There are definitely bad ways in which the government can clog the gears of real progress, and be used as tools to silence competition and screw over citizens in general, but I think there are some rules for being nice that are just common sense and needed.
Good points and agree with you, except on #3. One answer to this problem is at least one packaging format being adopted by the most common package managers. This way, if there were one or more widely used cross-distro packaging standards/formats, Nvidia could release that instead of a binary installer which will ultimately always be stupider because it's impossible to know all the silly changes and naming schemes and everything that every different distro uses. That's why the creation of a good packaging API/standard/format or updating the current formats that exist to make them be integratable into the common managers is the ideal solution.
Using yum or apt-get to upgrade my close source driver directly from the manufacturer's web site and the developers that made it, and same with open source ones directly from the developers of those, and for any and all my software that I choose because I shouldn't have to use a silly third-party distro-dependent repository, now that would be a great Linux feature. Sourceforge and other sources would be my repository of choice.
P.S., yes, I know you can have repositories that aren't from the distro, but they are still proprietary. Creating huge stacks of programs and calling it a "distro" is not the solution for achieving program interoperability, it only achieves distro lock-in. Open source freedom principals should reject distro lock-in in all forms and help to push for interoperability standards and wide spread adoption/compatibility of formats.
Slashdot Mirror
The fact is competition occurs very poorly sometimes without some kind of moderation. Without police officers, without traffic cops, without referees, sometimes businesses will have the balls to take a bat to the knee of their competition. They're called monopolies. It is not fair to call every business tactic fair, but that's what libertarians try to suggest. What ends up happening is these businesses end up increasing the barrier to entry to market so high that no one can even begin to compete unless they pull magic mega money from their ass and create an entire parallel infrastructure. It becomes the rich who are the only ones who can actually do anything, and because of it the rich get richer and poor get poorer.
That's the way it should be. If ISPs want to charge for so much data or so much speed, that's fine, but there should be no penalties or bonuses for connecting to specific servers.
Right, 100% in either direction is not the answer, it's whatever is best for the consumer that should be thought of. Look at the market and ask important questions like why isn't there more competition, why do most consumers only have two choices of broadband, is there anything we can do to make the playing field more level so that startups can get in there and compete too.
History has shown that too much regulation can be bad, and deregulation can lead to less competition and be bad too. In that case obviously neither of those are desirable.
Erm right, actually my argument meant that those were temporary things that Microsoft simply outright paid for. Doesn't mean real adoption took place or that those companies will continue to push Microsoft's version, but we'll see. Let the competition begin. ^^
No, it'd be a very nice feature, but if you don't care about it then go elsewhere. I'd like my repository to be all of Sourceforge and for more game companies as well as everyone else to be able to target Linux by using packaging standards. I know first hand how annoying it is for Linux users to try to install something that only comes as a source package because of the Linux packaging mess. So, don't tell me it's not a problem. All Linux users would play outside their walled gardens now and then if it was actually easy to share programs.
Cherry-picking is the point of news sites though. They felt that those points were news worthy, and you disagree and that's fine. I have to say though, there's certainly truth behind the value of OSS racing to zero. The only thing you can do really is make money on paid programming or support, and on trying to squeeze the freedom in some way from your customers so that you are seen as being a necessity. But, the reality that the software is free and that users want freedom, so they don't want to have to rely upon you, keeps setting in, forcing you to develop more and give more perks and hope that, well, freedom doesn't catch up with you, because then you're not needed. Fortunately, there's hopefully no end to the amount of features you can pile into a program, and there will always be some work to be found for paid programming/support.
Don't get me wrong, I like community-driven software and it will only get more and more common and I think the future could be driven by it 100% basically, once creating software is as easy as drawing a picture and anyone can slap it together (check out the Blender game engine, it rocks! Here's some links.). But, until then, and until computers can read your mind to create for you what you want, there will be a gap that paid programming can take advantage of. That, and advertising will continue to be a revenue stream.
Oh, and yes, I know you can still make money off of art even and the creation of content regardless of how difficult it was to create, but even that I think is something that becomes more and more difficult as the free sharing pool increases and continues applying a constant pressure, making your work have to become even better and better in order to get any money from it. Obviously making something easier to do decreases it's value and cost.
Yeah, that was pretty off-topic, I know, but still interesting to think about. ^^
Red Hat is simply Fedora stable of course with some extra non-free software thrown in. It would be nice if Red Hat released their own stable version instead of letting CentOS do that, but I guess they just don't care to. Where's the problem though? Just download CentOS? Yes, it's silly that it's on a separate website, but, I don't see why that's such a huge deal to you.
...instead of releasing RPMs and having to support a single distro, software programmers would be free to release one type that was supported by all distros. That cross-distro format may actually be RPMs, but until at least one format is made compatible with all the major package managers, life will continue to be hell for Linux users. The number of websites offering Linux source code only, or straight-up boring binaries so that there are no automatic updates with the user's system updates, is very high because of this, and Linux adoption will continue to creep until this feature among others is added. Yes, believe it or not, you could have one format that has enough metadata to satisfy the requirements of being successfully installed on any system, leaving the package managers to do whatever they wants with the package.
With Linux users loving to talk about document, web, graphics, and other standards, it's a real shame that doing something as important as allowing developers to target a single Linux packaging format, and making it easy for users to enjoy their software freedom, isn't a higher priority.
...bewbz ever hurt anyone?
Thanks.
To add to that, more specifically, OOXML has holes which allow dependency on things which are not open. OOXML is not a truly open and functional standard, it's just crap. ODF actually is a functional standard is it does not have the holes in it that OOXML does and cannot and will not be controlled in any way other than through the committee. As Bhaki pointed out, the committee is open, or should be, and hopefully will remain that way though there's a lot of speculation around that and ISO in general right now, but even if they tried to ruin ODF, it could be forked and maintained by a different standards body. OOXML? It's maintained by Microsoft as far as I know as they have stacked the board which maintains it.
But, you know, whatever is truly open and a good standard, those are the things that will actually get implemented by programs and will become actual standards, while the formats and systems which aren't truly unfettered standards will wither and die off.
Well good for them then, I guess, they can use Microsoft's software stack to develop programs that will hopefully be and stay cross-platform and function well, and we'll let competition happen where it will. I simply believe that because of the anti-Linux stance of Microsoft, because of their patent threats and their closed source and controlling nature they have on everything, that because, quite frankly, they are assholes who have no interest in seeing Linux be successful but merely wish to extend their empire, I don't trust them and I don't think anyone should, that's all. I will stay away from anything Microsoft which is proprietary and closed down, which everything has been so far. Even the stuff like OOXML if it wasn't controlled directly is controlled indirectly by relying on and making calls to stuff that is controlled. None of their crap is actually uncontrolled, and they don't care about severing that control because it's all a stunt to try to stretch their control into the Linux universe which they have said repeatedly is a big threat to them. If you want to buy their snake oil though go ahead, there are a lot of languages out there which are available on Linux and that don't depend on a single company for their sugar daddy because they're actually, you know, open.
.NET scripts to make a program function in a cross-platform environment.
Use OpenGL and Python, C, C++, Java, or something else instead which is actually open source, you don't need
And they are, and that's great, but both solutions are still of course proprietary. What is needed is an open standard for SVG manipulation. If I had to choose between Adobe and Microsoft, I'd choose Adobe, not just because I'd trust them better but because I know the Microsoft "non-official" implementations will always be horribly broken because they want to push their OS platform. Mono and Moonlight will try their best to implement all the Windows API calls they can, but there will always be holes, so things will always be broken and not quite as good as on native Windows using the "1st party" Silverlight implementation.
They control the format. Wake up and smell the coffee everyone. Or Mt. Dew or Dr. Pepper...whatever floats your boat. I'd expect Adobe to be the first one to open up more if I had to place my bet.
The Olympics used Silverlight to stream video and managed 8 million downloads per day of the Olympics. The Democratic National Convention streamed videos via Silverlight. So did Major League Baseball until next season. Estimates of Silverlight users are between 15% and 20%, which means that it has a significantly larger install base than that of Linux and NetBSD combined.
Also, news flash for you, Microsoft supposedly has billions of dollars. They paid those sites money to try to push their Silverlight advertisements, like they've done so many times before with so many other things. It was nothing more, nothing less.
That's not natural adoption. Real adoption is when you willingly use something because it's what your users/customers actually want.
Funny because no one cares about Mono or Moonlight except the Novell employees that are getting paid by Microsoft to develop them. It's a closed, proprietary standard that will always straggle behind the "official" Microsoft versions when running on their own Windows platform. Just like OOXML and all the other ways they've tried to E.E.E. everything in the past.
I'm glad Adobe has some competition now, but the answer is definitely not another proprietary format, especially not one that's completely loaded with holes and Windows API calls and basically require the entire Windows software stack to run it correctly in every instance, no thanks.
What's needed are open standards, not half-assed open implementations of closed formats.
Exactly. Just like OOXML, any implementations other than their own will straggle along behind them, never quite implementing everything "as good as the '1st party' version on Windows". They leave holes open so they can extend whatever closed or proprietary or patented feature they want that is exclusive to Windows in there, so Mono and Moonlight will always be the "sucky versions".
"Oh, that Silverlight animation isn't playing on your computer? I guess that's just because your OS sucks, it works fine for me on Windows, you should upgrade!"
I'm glad Flash and Adobe have more competition now, even if it's another proprietary format, but what's needed are open standards that aren't completely tied to and controlled by single companies, but of course that's the way they want it. I'd like to see the W3C implement an open standard for SVG manipulation. Perhaps eventually one of these two companies will end up opening up completely and one of them will become an open standard, if I had to guess I'd pick Adobe to be the first to get there, but I'm definitely not holding my breath just yet.
It doesn't matter what communication difficulties you had, the fact remains that it's a proprietary standard, not an open one, and that's all that matters. It doesn't matter at all if the implementations are open source or not. If the standard is controlled, it's not open, and players/creators shouldn't have to play catch up with trying to figure out what in the hell is going on, and suffering with all kinds of breakage along the way. Mono and Moonlight will never be as good to use because, just like OOXML, they are broken proprietary standards that try to pretend they are open. They purposefully leave holes open so that closed, patented technology can be inserted and will always fuxxor things up so that any implementation other than their own will fail.
"Oh, that Silverlight animation isn't playing on your computer? I guess that's just because your OS sucks, it works fine for me on Windows, you should upgrade!"
Unless you're using Windows and the latest version of everything, things will eventually fail, and that's how E.E.E. works. Even when you are using their own stuff on their own platform, they sometimes fail there too.
We want open standards, is what we want, we don't care about the actual software implementation. Both Adobe and Microsoft are using closed standards. They don't want anyone else making software for their proprietary standards because they want you using their own implementations. Having an open standard would actually mean easy access for any and all software to implement it, and encoders/decoders wouldn't have to be playing a reverse engineering game of catchup.
The W3C needs to develop an open standard for displaying and manipulating SVG in browsers to allow implementation to be easy.
WMV, H.264, and other codecs are also proprietary formats. The fact that x264 and Xvid and others exist and are open source doesn't change the fact that they are still controlled and patented video codecs. We want actual open systems which are not encumbered by anything, i.e. neither Adobe nor Microsoft can control. Unless those companies completely open up, or until an actual open standard comes about, users will be chained to these two companies, which is what they want.
Sure, it's good that Adobe finally has competition, now there are two proprietary standards which is better than one. Still though, an open standard is ultimately needed.
I'm pretty sure they meant open standards of course, to go back to what the parent said. Standards which are non-proprietary. Adobe makes money from Flash by selling Flash creation software. That will only change with more competition, so I'm glad Silverlight is around to do that, but both are still proprietary.
We, as internet users everywhere, regardless of operating system, want open standards. Standards which can be used with any software, both decoders/players and encoders/creators, and not be controlled or limited in any way except by the specification of the standard, and even that should not be limiting in that it should allow for new features to come about later.
Neither Adobe nor Microsoft make it easy for making encoders or decoders interoperable with their closed standards, because they want everyone using their software, and that's why we want standards that are truly open.
Close. Most people are using Windows XP (68.11%) and most of the rest are using Windows Vista (19.29%). Behind that are the Intel-based Mac users (5.94%).
Just, randomly stepping in here but, I'm quite sure that all the huge difficulties in measuring market penetration makes using things like decimal points pretty much useless and retarded.
Sorry, I meant I agree with you to a degree. Oiy. >.
I do mostly like Gnome's layout though, a lot of things about it any way. I like the menu system (Apps, Places, System) a billion times better than the Windows or other menu systems.
I like Gnome.
So, 1 vote here. ^^
But seriously, yes I agree with you do agree, and any features on whatever level, even power user features, should still be created but be available as plug-ins if "normal" users to care to have them "clutter" up the desktop. I think there are always ways around that though, like just having an advanced menu that hides all the "power tools".
As long as you program intelligently and make everything modular, you can just turn on whatever features in the GUI. Gnome and all Linux programmers definitely need to listen to more user feedback. Some are, some aren't, the ones that won't will die off I guess or just stay niche.
I think the real reason as to why there is so much fail there and with most economic or socialistic ideas is because there is no purely right or wrong answer. There's bad, worse, good, decent, OK, and all sorts of shades of gray, but I don't think there's a 100% horrible or good system. I think you can have systems which are structured so that a very liberal system "works" to some degree, and systems which are structured so that a very socialistic system "works" to some degree, but ultimately both may come with certain benefits and problems, so like you said perhaps the best may be some kind of balance.
I think the problem with extreme libertarianism is that it basically challenges all laws. Oh, you think universal health care isn't needed, well what about the fire and police? Oh, those aren't needed either, so is there any use for government whatsoever in a libertarian society? If everything will somehow run itself and nothing is needed, then what's the point of any kind of government, it should be all run by corporations. Yes, because I'm sure corporations will take really good care of everyone. I'm sure that there will be no pollution, thefts, fires, murders, rotten food being sold, and that everyone will be healthy and happy citizens.
Like you said, I think it all boils down to the fact that greed exists because assholes exist. If your idea of a good country is one living inside a bunker you built with a munition stockpile trying to defend yourself because you didn't have enough money to pay off the "police force" (mafia) to protect you, I don't wanna know what you think a bad one would be like.
There are definitely bad ways in which the government can clog the gears of real progress, and be used as tools to silence competition and screw over citizens in general, but I think there are some rules for being nice that are just common sense and needed.
Semantics. How about just call them geeks because they're knowledgeable about computers, and be done with it. ^^
Good points and agree with you, except on #3. One answer to this problem is at least one packaging format being adopted by the most common package managers. This way, if there were one or more widely used cross-distro packaging standards/formats, Nvidia could release that instead of a binary installer which will ultimately always be stupider because it's impossible to know all the silly changes and naming schemes and everything that every different distro uses. That's why the creation of a good packaging API/standard/format or updating the current formats that exist to make them be integratable into the common managers is the ideal solution.
Using yum or apt-get to upgrade my close source driver directly from the manufacturer's web site and the developers that made it, and same with open source ones directly from the developers of those, and for any and all my software that I choose because I shouldn't have to use a silly third-party distro-dependent repository, now that would be a great Linux feature. Sourceforge and other sources would be my repository of choice.
P.S., yes, I know you can have repositories that aren't from the distro, but they are still proprietary. Creating huge stacks of programs and calling it a "distro" is not the solution for achieving program interoperability, it only achieves distro lock-in. Open source freedom principals should reject distro lock-in in all forms and help to push for interoperability standards and wide spread adoption/compatibility of formats.