Funny that. I've had quite similar nightmares with Java and PHP, which are supposed to be all that. My history with Java has really REALLY put me off that languaage (and now with Oracle on the litigation warpath I've resolved to avoid Java whever reasonably possible--I'd even wipe my Galaxy S2 of the Java-esque Android and put on boot2gecko if the latter was really ready for prime time). In the case of PHP I found it to be like a walk in the pasture--an easy hike to start but then you step in a pile of crap and can't get that smell off of you. Perl, on the other hand, I learned in the mid-late nineties when I was tasked with authoring simple CGI scripts for an Apache web server on Linux, and I took to it fairly quickly and didn't get trapped in a nightmare. Perl certainly gives you opportunity to step in something smelly, but the simpe requirements in my situation didn't really invite that risk.

Perhaps it isn't the language it is the authors (don't take offense if the large body of Perl you must maintain was written by yourself). I think my dislike of Java comes from the fact that for most of its existence it hasn't been used to do anything "fun". Java went all "enterprisey" and enterprise applications are just big slow stinky piles of anti-patterns. Maybe if I learned Java coding through programming games for Android phones instead of delving into the guts of some WebSphere appllication i would have thought different, but Android and mobile apps just didn't exist beyond what was hard coded into your dumb-phone. The nightmare isn't really Java itself, it's that it is most often used on "nightmare projects" driven by committees using stodgy old "waterfall" management methodologies, resulting in througly unpleasant software (for some reason enterprise software has to be wretched to use--if it isn't as slow, cumbersome and confusing to use as SAP then you aren't ready for production yet).

I remember when PHP itself was a Perl library (how ironic is that, with so many people saying Perl is dead and you should move on to PHP or something like that?). I didn't give it a second look at the time because the PHP library didn't provide me with anything *I* needed at that point). Then somewhere along the line that was dropped in favour of a completely re-implemented "Perl-free" version that, well, looked and behaved like Perl's retarded little brother, and that didn't impress me much (but I DO understand that was probably why it caught on--less sophisticated--easier to adopt). Many years went by and PHP gained a lot of traction and got more complex and now I was confronted with the need to work with frameworks and content-management systems written in PHP. Guess what? PHP is not used to develop anything "fun" either--it is just un-fun in a different way than Java. Instead of dry, accountant-like programmer-analysts of the enterprise-Java world, you had freewheeling wunderkind "web developers" who churned out big balls of PHP goo floating in HTML tag soup. No anti-patterns here--no discernable software design patterns at all actually. And it seems that PHP develpers were the slowest learning programmers of the entire world--even after VB6 devs were refactoring their "code" to implement paramaterised ADO queries it seems PHP devs happily continued to cobble together un-escaped strings and inviting little Bobby Tables to own their arses. When I eventually delved into the guts of the likes of PHPbb and Wordpress and Drupal modules I felt a bit like PHP was in over its head--constantly being called upon to do just a bit more than it was designed to do and that PHP was continually catching up.

I know that Perl is no better--I'm sure that there are critical enterprise systems out there supported by crufty, cryptic Perl that looks like line noise. I'm sure someone out there could cite SQL Ledger as an example of "crufty ugly business Perl" for example. Lord knows the early days of the web rested upon loads of crude, insecure tainted Perl as the dot-com bubble was inflating, but back in the day Perl was "fun" and "cool"--people wrote Perl poetry, people had contests to make it do as much in one line of code as possible, and Perl is the language of choice to create executable ASCII art! Back in the dark ages of the BLINK tag web pages were uncomplicated and as such I was doing uncomplicated Perl code. Gerring into Perl was"fun", not "work" like Java and PHP weree in the contexts where I had to learn those languages. Further to that, Perl remained fun for the most part. Plus, CPAN was the worlds first "app store"/software repository. Perl is like "programmatic lego" than any other language out there. NO other language has as big library of modules as Perl does.

So perhaps the love or hate of perl is more to do with personal context of the programmer than with the characteristics of the language after all. Your first impresion of Perl was probably because you drew the short-straw at work and were foced to learn Perl in the context of maintaining old legacy ad-hoc systems written in Perl by some old grey-beard that has long since retired and/or passed away--and it is uncommented and unstructured and written in Perl 4 style. Of course you'd hate that! That's how I was formally introduced to Java and PHP so I can understand!

You have to looks at BSA's surveys with a skeptic's eye. Their definition of "pirated software" is very fluid. The BSA in essence decides what the results are supposed to be then manipulate their data to conform. They don't say exactly that "we want the survey to show 57%" or "company X is short 15 MS office licenses", but they DO certainly go into the process with the full intention of reporting a "growing number of pirates" or "company X is out of compliance". Survey results are then manipulated to that outcome. (disclaimer: I do not have "smoking gun" evidence, but anecdotally in terms of how they've conducted themselves with those I know who have been audited--there were pretty convincing indications that they had decided the outcome of the audit in advance).

What the BSA also does not report clearly is that they DO consider this survey a sign of success in a certain sense. It is a survey of people "admitting" they pirated, not a report of audit results. This does not indicate growing piracy--it indicates growing AWARENESS of piracy. For example, with Windows there are retail, OEM and volume licenses of the OS, and you cannot, for example, LEGALLY format the hard drive of an OEM XP machine and use a "full OEM Win 7" disc and license (perhaps because it was obtained cheaper than the upgrade version) to upgrade, even if you can technically achive this. Though "BSA education" more people know this is piracy even if you "legally own and paid for" the OEM version (the OEM version can legally only be used on a new PC).

So, it isn't that more pirating is going on, it is that more people are aware of (or being made aware of) the complexities of closed software licensing and are admitting to "pirating" by way of such practices as incorrectly purchsing and using OEM installations.

Again, this is a survey measuring what the respndants THINK is piracy (or are led to believe is piravy). There could be a lot of false reports. People are becoming more AWARE of piracy but are still trying to fully understand what it really is. Although as I stated above more people know that you more often than not do NOT "owm" the software but rather "the right" to use it, and that those rights are limited in varying degrees (ie. OEM vs volume vs retail vs upgrade Windows grants you different levels of rights), there is still a (mis) conception of "no monetary payment == piracy"--of all misconceptions that is one BSA is trying to preserve and perhaps even enhance.

Especially the way BSA frames its reports and debates, how possible is it that "pointy haired bosses" out there reponding to BSA surveys know that their IT guys swapped out their creaky old file and print server running Windows 2000 with a new box running CentOS, and since there is no record of payment, or an activation certificate, or a product key, that perhaps they were convinced by the BSA survey that perhaps it is a "pirated copy" of RHEL? The thought is that there must be concrete evidence of licensing like a receipt or activation certificate ot whatnot that can be presented as proof in an audit, so just downloading and burning ISOs or installing from a repository on the internet just looks like piracy even when it isn't.

Even if they know their Linux systems are in compliance, it is known that some businesses make sure to have records of a Windows license for them "just in case". Some schools an librares in the past have had their Linux machines called "out of compliance" merely because the BSA auditor believed they were converted to Linux AFTER the effective audit date (the date on the letter informing the target of the audit--any licenses purchased or software installs altered after that date to comform with licensing is not considered sufficient to pass an audit). In most cases the Linux migration took place before the audit but the cost to appeal BSA audits is astronomical--out of reach for a school or library or small business. Settling with the BSA or just buying licenses that go unused is just the "IT tax" cost of doing business for these people.

As such I do not see reported piracy going to zero for a long time--not a long as closed software continued to dominate in IT. If you are "all Linux" you won't get much grief from the BSA., becasue potential revenue from damages is limited for them. However, in heterogenous environments with high potential infringement good recordkeeping is going to be key for those who are apt to be targeted by BSA. Even if your software is Free it might be wise in a mixed environment to keep some solid evidence indicating when it was put into use. I don't know how far you would want to go, but perhaps the tin-foil-hatted amongst us could send a DVD in a sealed envelope to themselves via registered mail on a regular basis.

All in all though, almost all closed licensing schemes and their enforcement mechanisms are bullsh!t and the typical small and medium business targeted by the BSA for audits would be best advised to make maximal use of Free software to keep the cost of license management and compliance to a minimum.

...is that they are even harder to kill than cockroaches. When the big nuke goes off in the sky and wipes out humanity, all that will be left are cockraoches and they will be using Windows because they think Linux is "only for comp-sci majors".

Using the "powerful tools" in Linux is not a requirement. My parents use a web browser, and email client and Libre Office 90 percent of the time. Ten percent of the time they play solitaire. and copy the pictures off their digital camera because they've filled their SD card with pictures of the grandchildren and great-grandchildren. They can do that on a Linux OS without "powerful tools" just as well as they can on Windows, maybe better.

It was those pictures that made my dad in particular interested in migrating away from Windows. They caught a virus that rendered their old Windows system unbootable and they had hundreds of pictures that had not yet been printed or backed up to CDs or DVDs on there and were quite upset that they may have lost all those pictures. I used Trinity Rescue Kit bootable Linux CD to recover their files, then reformatted their drive and installed Ubuntu. They still keep their Linux machine because "Windows is easy but I don't trust it with important files anymore", and they also hanve found F-Spot and Shotwell to be faster and easier to use than the crapware supplied with their digital camera for Windows.

OK, first you suggest that Linux is for "comp-sci majors", then you suggest the solution is to buy a PC from a system builder? I do agree with you, and it is why I bought a "no name" Clevo notebook online from a build-to-order vendor (finding a notebook with interchangeable discrete graphics cards and CPUs and is not pre-loaded with crapware-laden Windows that has no proper re-install media is impossible from a big box store). However, The kind of people who could not adapt to a change of an OS from Windows to Mac or Linux wouldn't have the first idea of where to go anymore. It seems that local system build shops are trending in the direction of video rental stores--sure some may be around forever, but they are the domain of the computer enthusiast, and that is a very narrow market. Also, the general public has a certain "comfort level" with the big chain stores--they know what they are getting (even if they don't always like it, at least they have expectiations). It is probably just as easy for average users to have someone format and resinstall an OS (Windows again, OR a Linux OS or whatever) than to spend time to seek out a local computer shop and worry if they are trustworthy.

In my area we are lucky--there is a regional chain called Memory Express that builds their own line of "Velocity" desktops and servers, both pre-configured and build-to-order. That is the closest you can come in my area to a "local system builder" that can offer you crapware-free computers. However they do NOT offer build-to-order notebooks--you can choose from Lenovo, Acer, ASUS, MSI and so forth--the one consolation is that their brand selection is very diverse so you can fild one that is relatively crapware-free. However you are still spending extra time shopping, or extra money booking with their service dept. to give it the MemEx version of the "signature treatment".

I think that the goofing off discussed in the article is not of the browsing facebook and playing freecell variety. It is the kind of thing that we would otherwise call "research and development" if it were conducted by someone with a PhD.

Perhaps it is a concept better sold as "Integration of R&D into business operations" rather than "goofing off" or "skunkworks".

Perhaps that isn't as great a problem as it sounds. If the overall footprint of all those rack formats is 24" it stands to reason that there would be racks out there where the mounts for the vertical posts have mounting holes to accomodate 19 and 23, and to support 21 would be a matter of putting one more hole in each bracket.

That said, maybe it would've just made sense to say data centres should adopt 23" width and specify different power rail designs to match.

Except the type of nuclear "micro-reactor" that would fit within a city lot, typically within a facility the size of a typical substation at most, would be incapable of going into meltdown. Furthermore throium-based reactors produce much more "benign" waste products--certainly they are still toxic but disposal and site remediation would be not that far removed from something like decontaminating the site of an old gas station that once handled leaded fuel.

Also, a gas furnace that blows up would in all likelihood leave the house permanently uninhabitable. Almost without exception, when a gas furnace explodes, even if the house is still standing the internal pressure of the exploion "puffs out" the structure and makes it permanently, structurally unsound. In the most optimistic cases repair would not taks days, but rather weeks and months as the uilding is gutted to the frame to repair the damage within. This would not be a problem with what is envisioned in the parent to your post as it would involve a reactor with the capacity to provide service to "maybe just a single subdivision". While that is small, it is not so small it would sit inside anyone's house. As I said, this is something that would sit withiin a substation facility where traditionally transmission lines connect to distribution (but in this case there would be no tie in to a transmission line, but instead directly to a generation unit). That is already not a residintial location.

You DO know that fighting environmental causes is a means to a different end right? Greenpeace will fight ANY method of large scale energy supply. If we end up developing totally safe fusion energy on a large scale that would supply us all with abundant power with no CO2 produced, no dangerous wastes, etc they will fight it tooth an nail--even if they have to completely trump up some reason to do so.

Greenpeace are made up of "luddite hippies" who want to force all the world to live like "luddite hippies". That is their final objective--to stop and reverse progress and make the world into one giant hippie commune. It sounds far fetched and unachievable (and it pretty much is), but that would be their ideal goal. It would be unwise to "tune then out" though because there is always the risk they become infiltrated by "eco-terrorists"--there are already a number of activists who believe "the end justifies the means" in any case.

You joined Greenpeace to get a piece of arse? If you are looking for willing co-eds in Greenpeace, lets just say "the odds are good, but the goods are odd". There are two types of Greenpeace enthusiasts:

1. Those who are taking prescription psychoactive medication
2. Those who really SHOULD be on psychoactive medication.

By and large, they are earnest in their concerns for the environment--they really want to do good by people and the earth, but 99 percent of them are ignorant of hard science and emotionally driven. If you hook up with one of these they will drunk dial you and drive by your house and cry at your front door, waking the neighbours. If they are not vegan they may leave a boiling bunny on your stovetop.

The 1 percent remaining are intelligent and very lucid are also very manipulative. They can contort facts better than organisers of an Arnold Swartzenegger election campaign. They will also never go out with you.

Let me don a tinfoil hat of my own at this point. This is really quite a fanciful theory, so don't take it TOO seriously (but there are probably some uncomfortable truths buried in there):

Apple may be guilding the lily a bit with its energy projections, but you can bet the truth is much closer to what Apple claims than what Greenpeace claims. Greenpeace will take the "seed" of truth then mutate it into a tangled weed of mis-stated facts. Because of their history of "defending the earth" for a good cause, and being perceived as "anti-corporate", they can get away with telling lies grown from facts used out-of-context. It is difficult to refute Greenpeace because they target "big corporate evil". A multi-billion dollar company like Apple or Exxon or General Motors garners little sympathy from the public, and when they refute Greenpeace it is seen as an activity done solely in their own interests (even if they are correcting mis-statements). Greenpeace are very clever that way--they get attention by vilifying high-profile, large corporations and because they are a "charity" it is very bad optics to aggressively defend against them (you become even more evil if you sue greenpeace for defamation and so on), so Greenpeace targets are left with little recourse but to meekly defend themselves with less spectacular facts.

Here is another example: The Keystone XL pipeline is being vigourously fought against, and Greenpeace is in the forefront of that fight. The pipeline is not itself the target--concerns about routing through an aquifer have been addressed and there is basically no government opposition--the hangups are largely with a few property owners and not of an environmental nature (mostly protests over right of ways bisecting properties, effects on property values and other economic/logistical matters). The reason they want it killed is because it allows Canadian bitumen to more readily make its way to gulf coast refineries.

The public argument is that Canadian bitumen comes from messy, energy-intensive mining operations--it looks ugly and makes more CO2 than average oil sources. But even that is not REALLY what Greenpeace hates. The REAL reason is that Canadian bitumen is cheaper than west-texas intermediate--the spread is generally even more than the added cost of refining. Also by law of supply and demand, more supply to refineries for the same demand lowers prices overall. The end goal of Greenpeace is to make fossil-fuel sources of energy as expensive as possible, and to do that you must choke supply. The most "ethical" way to get people to curtail their use of fossil fuels is to educate them, convince them to modify their behaviour voluntairly, but that is the hard way. The easier approach is to curtail supply of oil and gas and force people to use less (they work to eliminate nuclear energy much the same way).

Greenpeace's real mandate is to make all energy more expensive (not just renewable--but expensive). If energy gets expensive enough then first-world nations will have to start de-industrialising. As developing nations advance and developed nations regress the world would "equalise" at some point in the middle. The environmental theme is basically the golden good intention pavement on the road leading right to hell.

From the editorial/commentary in the posting for the article:

The submitter is very ignorant about energy prices as are most people I suspect. Though crude oil and products refined from it (notably gasoline and diesel) are indeed high and rising, those fuels are never used for large scale electrical power generation. The vast majority of "carbon-based" power generation is from coal and natural gas. While those fuels are not totally "clean" nor renewable they are actually quite cheap. In the case of fuel coal, prices peaked in the mid 1970s to mid 1980s, and in the long term has closely followed inflation (that is, its price has been flat at about US$26 per short ton in year 2000 dollars). The price of natural gas, the second most popular method of carbon-based electricity generation, has not only failed to rise permanently but it has actually DROPPED significantly. They are presently hovering at a TEN and FIFTEEN YEAR LOWS, and adjusted for inflation the price also stays quite steady, with only brief spikes as in the last boom before the bust.

The thing is, though wind power is considered "clean" it is actaully more detrimental to the environment, and also more costly, than many proponents would have you believe. In order to produce the same amount of power as a relatively modest natural gas fired station requires dozens of wind turbines spread out across a much larger area. I live in Alberta, home to both "dirty" oilsands (Fort McMurray) and a significant amount of "clean" wind power generation (Pincher Creek). When news broke of birds perishing in the tailings ponds of oilsands upgraders it made international news, yet a comparable amount of birds are killed by wind farms by area as in the oilsands. There are also concerns about the size of the structures and the amount of low-level noise they make interfering with wildlife migration patterns and habitats. I believe it is important to invest in renewable energy for sure, and in the case of wind power the price has declined over time so that it is just now becoming competitive with more traditional sources of power. However, it should be put under the same scrutiny as any other kind of industrial operation, just as non-conventional oil and gas (heavy oil/bitument, oil and gas drilling in tight formations using fracing, deep-water drilling, etc) have been very heavily and closely scrutinised inthe past few years, so too should any other form of energy technology.

Wind can be used effectively and safely and affordably if done right, but it should not be blindly pursued with critics being shot down for being anti-environment. for those readers from Ontario, I'm sure you know that the province has a VERY poor record on properly managing the electricity industry. Not only has it approved and pushed forward poorly planned wind farms (of such close proximity to residential areas as to kill property values and even disrupt sleep), they've also managed to completely mess up the market with consumers burdened by expensive surcharges to pay for government boondoggles and a spot market for power that is so wild that sometimes the province even has to PAY TONS OF MONEY TO MAKE NEIGHBOURING STATES TAKE THEIR EXCESS POWER.

The story is far more complicated tham most people outside the situation might think. There is more to it than "rah rah for oil and gas" or "that wind farm might give me a tumour" hysteria. Because of the way the Ontario government has mistreated residents affected by past wind projects, in addition to the tragic waste of money on past "green energy" boondoggles in a province already struggling with massive government deficits, there is a lot of resistance to these sort of big expensive government-driven initiatives there right now.

This thread of conversation is about Circuit City, not "The Source". A little background for those outside of Canada:

Radio Shack stores in the US were run by a corporation called Tandy (which a few years ago officially changed its name to match its chain of stores as it consolidated their assets around them). All stores outside the US (almost all in Canada, and a few in UK and Australia I think) were run (after the mid 1980s) by a Canadian-owned and operated company called InterTan. InterTan was not a subsitiary of Tandy/Radio Shack of the US, nor did the US have any ownership stake of any significance. InterTan licensed the Radio Shack brand and sold merchandise for Tandy outside the US in exchange for fees/cut of profit/etc. They signed long terms agreements (10 years I think) and renewing the licensing agreement was usually a formality.

InterTan's ownership has changed at times over the years I think, starting as a Tandy subsidiary but then becoming completely independent in terms of ownership. Intertan eventually ran several tech-focused chains (Radio Shack, Rogers Plus, Batteries Plus, THS Studio...). Intertan struggled after the dot-com-bomb, and sold off all its assets outside Canada, and a few years later sold itself to Circuit City USA in the mid 2000s.

Radio Shack (USA) was not pleased that a competitor (especially one responsible for cutting into its margins in its US operations) was running stores with its brand name and making profits of its products. Despite several years being left in the licensing agreement they took InterTan to court and won--the licensing agreement was nullified due to the major change in Intertan's ownership (and the fact that a major competitor representing itself as another businesses brand is understandably awkward). Intertan was forced to re-brand all the Radio Shacks in Canada (except a very few small-town franchises they didn't own, who mostly went with the US parent to renew their franchise agreements) to "The Source by Circuit City". CC was responsible for some rapid expansion (those "plus" stores) and I think was responsible for some of the strain on the business. However, The Source operated mostly like "old school" radio shacks and continued to be a sustainable business even as CC in the States crashed and burned. The parent company tried to consolidate and suck up as much cash as possible by divesting itself of as many non "Source" assets a possible.

When CC went into liquidation it tried to put InterTan up for sale but that didn't work out--InterTan was put into receivership and ordered to liquidate its assets, not because it was not a viable busienss but because it was more or less ordered to by its parent Circuit City through US bankruptcy proceedings. Within days, Bell Canada put in an offer to buy the entire chain of "The Source" stores from InterTan. By then InterTan had closed almost all its Batteris Plus and THS Studio stores and a bunch of its Rogers Plus stores, along with several underperforming Source locations. Since Bell was a competitor to Rogers it did not want to run stores that licensed its brand so they only bought "The Source". Since there was almost nothing left of InterTan, Rogers took over all its retail operations directly, Batteries Plus and THS disappeared completely and InterTan folded operations completely. "The Source" is now a subsidiary of Bell Canada.

Radio Shack has tried to re-enter the Canadian market but it hasn't been very successful. The InterTan Radioshacks (that became "the source") were not the same as the US ones, and when Radio Shack opened new stores they had different decor and focused on different merchandise--they focused heavily on mobile phones, computer accessories, cables and batteries, whereas the InterTan stores still had a half-decent (if overpriced) electronic parts aisle and a lot bigger variety of gadgets and toys and televisions and satellite gear and so on--and even after they renamed then to "the source" they looked more like the Radio Shacks that people remembered than the "new" Radio Shacks did. Also, Radio Shack customer service was absolutely dismal (whereas "the source" was merely mediocre). Radio Shack in Canada was a total fail. As such there are virtually no Radio Shacks outside the US any more.

As for Best Buy, in Canada they seem to be doing OK, and from a customer perspective aren't any better or worse than any other big box chain. They also are the parent company of a Canadian chain called "Future Shop", which has dome different merchandise but lots of overlap. They were bought out by Best Buy many years ago but for some reason they are run as a separate line of business despite large areas of overlap. Future Shop has a reputation of having pushy commissioned sales people who want to upsell you or sell you their extended warranty on everything. If you were willing they'd sell you the extended warranty on a USB cable for $5 I'm sure. Before Best Buy came around all those years ago it was really REALLY bad, but over the years since then it is not quite as bad. They are also known to be the most clueless of salespeople in the industry. That has not changed at Future Shop--probably because Best Buy salespeople are only marginally less clueless. Both chains are known to have the dodgiest computer repair people too, just as in the US, in Canada they will scan your hard drives for personal files and take copies of them, re-seat components and charge you for new ones they didn't use and hold onto your computer for days, tell the customer it was "sent to the service centre" then charge them for the time, even though they fix the computer in a couple of hours and keep it to play with for awhile.

The big box electronics chains are not prevalent in Canada--Best Buy and its Future Shop subsidiary are probably the only nation wide ones left, and if they are in trouble and go extinct they'd not really be missed. The one single redeeming factor is that they are price competitive and that is it (they regularly sell many items cheaper in Canada than they do at their US couterparts). Future Shop has a better chance because I think it has a better online presence. There are better alternatives:

* strong regional chains like Memory Express in western Canada--way better selection and better service because of their focus on computers and home theatre.
* online-only like NCIX
* general retail chains with half-decent electronics sections like Walmart or London Drugs.
* wholesale clubs--COSTCO has limited selection and no customer service but great prices and return policies.

Those factors and a smaller market means there has never been a real big presence for big box tech--no Frys, no Circuit City, no CompUSA, and I don't think it has been really missed. ...which is probably why

I sat Phtotshop on the top of this lost, and I my first instinct was to mod this down as "Troll". Whenever I see a critical post that starts with mentioning Photoshop I immediately think..no, i KNOW... they are being completely full of crap. This is by no means insightful. This poster is clueless or trying to troll. But maybe it would be more constructive to forego modding and comment on this.

OK I understand that Photoshop is a de-facto industry standard amongst graphic artists and such, but seriously how many "normal users" really use Photoshop? Out of 100 maybe three, and two of them are useing a cracked/pirated they found on some torrent site. Photoshop is NOT a "killer app" outside of graphic design, and 99 percent of users have no use for 99 percent of Photoshop's capabilites. Normal users want to crop or resize or remove redeye or apply a set of basic filters and want to do it easily. Photoshop is NOT the answer any more than GIMP for these people. They will use the rinky-tink software that comes with their camera, and would be happs with a rinky-tink photo editing app bundled with GNOME or KDE. In the case of GNOME, the "shotwell" app is probably the best candidate to address this concern rather than petitioning to have Photoshop ported to Linux (which will never happen with sub-5-percent OS market share).

As for the other items on your list:

* Acrobat. Are you talking about the "reader" or the "pro" version? I know even less people who use Acrobat than who use Photoshop--exactly ONE PERSON--a prefessional graphic designer. As for the reader everybody uses? IT SUCKS HARDER THAN A HOOVER AND EVERYBODY DESPISES IT. It is big, bloated slow crapware that continually bugs you with its auto updates to fix nasty security holes. Evince on Linux systems is a far better alternative to view PDFs and there are many alternatives for all platforms to that steaming pile of crap.

* Sharepoint. Perhaps but as a client I've been able to use a sharepoint website from Firefox on a Linux machine well enough to suit my needs. I understand its power exends far past being a fancy web portal but outside of a corporate environment nobody cares about sharepoint in the slightest. As Apple has proven the key to success is to make the public fall in love with your product, which then drives business to accomodate. From a server perspective trying to set up an effective sharepoint system made me want to slit my wrists--it seems like a whole lot of "cumbersome" to do what should be more simple.

* Call of Duty. Perhaps the games issue is the single valid point here, but not "call of duty". Hard core PC gaming is most definitely a small niche market--the market for games like that are served quite successfully by game consoles. If anything though, those consoles represent one of the more serious threats to open computing--MSFT would like nothing better than to make its XBOX the replacement for your home PC. But realistically, for personal computing the games market isn't "call of duty", it is "bejewelled" and "farmville" and the like.

* Quicken. One of the few personal computing apps users might miss if they switch from Windows...oh wait, never mind. The retarded install process notwithstanding, some WINE tweaks/UI improvements could address such things. But there are better programs than Quicken that don't cost a bundle. GnuCash and Money Manager Ex work as good or better, are free (and "Free") and at least the former can import Quicken data. So rather than stuggle to use an inferior product via WINE, use one built for purpose on Linux.

* Turbotax. This is a product that is being reduced to niche or even irrelevancy by web-based applications. I have filed my income tax electronically via the web for four years now from Firefox on a Linux computer.

* As crappy as printing support has been historically, Windows was behind the curve for awhile. when I last installed Debian I didn't even go into a printer setup or explicitly install drivers at all. I installed the standard desktop, fired up a browser, booked a flight and hit print so I could send the hardcopy to work and it printed...it literally "just worked" Apple-style. Perhaps that is because CUPS to this point has been part of MacOS X too. The issue is not the operating system, it is the stinky, steaming $50 pile of crap Walmart tried to pass off as a "printer". Trust me, no good can come from such a piece of evil, even with th latest shiny Windows 7 install--$50 Walmart printers fully support multi-platform aggravation.

I guess in summary is that URSERS DON'T WANT SPECIFIC SOFTWARE, THEY WANT SPECIFIC *FUNCTIONALITY*. If it can be done with alternative apps at a low enough learning curve--and they are aware of the alternatives--they will pick them up. It works well for Apple to sell Macs after all.

I've had a very similar experience as a GNOME3 user since June. The transition to Gnome 3 is jarring for someone used to any other "Traditional" desktop environment. However my first experience with it went much MUCH better than my first kick at the can with unity. Unity was such a turnoff for me that I stuck with Lucid and eventually ditched Ubuntu for Debian for my new computer. I can't be alone in that respect--the initial releases of Unity were an unmitgated disaster, though it has improved somewhat. Gnome 3 on the other hand has been by far the most well recieved desktop when I've presented it to computer novices. To a slashdot-like audience "tablet-like on a PC" is an insult--it makes no sense, but to my young niece or my father in his 70s who make the same observation they say it as a complement. Computers are "hard"--iPads and iphones and droids are "easy", or at least "easier". The differences in form factor mean there should be some differences in the user interface obviously, but for "regular folk" incorporating some more appliance-like design makes the computer much less intimidating.

I found that although the initial release of GNOME 3 was quite un-polished there was certainly a sense of where the project is trying to go. Though I don't totally agreee with some of the Tom's Hardware editorialising, I was impressed with the throroughness of its review and that they did at least "get it" at some level. Gnome 3 is striving to cater to the "uninitiated" linux user--indeed to users unaccustomed to computers of any platform. When presented with the Gnome 3 desktop and told to figure out how to do a given task with no assistance, what would a novice user do? That seems to be the approach the designers have taken.

To put yourself in a newbie's shoes: If you want to do anything you'd thing "activities--that must be where I go". There are more efficient ways to bring up the launcher/switcher screen--notably the super/"windows" key but that is something you can learn. It brings to mind a humourous youtube video where an IT blogger/journalist shows his dad the Windows 8 "public preview" and tells him to perform a simple task, ends up getting out of the "metro tile" screen onto an empty desktop, then has no idea how to get back without prompting. Gnome 3 may have its growing pains, but it seems Win 8 will have more than its share of issues with novices and opwer users alike.

So if you aren't a regular computer user what do you do when you are done using a gadget? Well, you turn it off. how do you accomplish this in Gnome 3? They are going to press the power button, and in Gnome 3 when you do that the shutdown dialogue pops up and counts down from 60, just like a Mac. So if you can do that, why bother with a superfluous shutdown icon or menu item on the screen?

As an experienced user with a definitely established set of habits I can certainly say I encounter frustrations with Gnome 3 from time to time, but I find I'm really growing into Gnome 3 quite well. The learning curve is NOT as steep as Tom's might have you believe--admittedly it does present some obsacles if you are trying to "2-ify" the shell to make it conform to your habits. However one thing Tom's very effectively demonstrates is that however flawed you might find the Gnome 3 shell out of the box, as a platform is has fantastic potential, certainly moreso than Unity could ever offer and enough flexibility to hold its own against KDE. The Gnome Shell Extensions are still in their infancy but it makes the new Gnome Shell into a very versatile platform.

I think the jury is still out on whether the strategy of simplification and stepping out of the traditional "desktop box" more than any other GUI is a mistake. I can understand how seasoned Linux users could take offense to the "dumbing down" but perhaps it was the right thing to do. XFCE, KDE, and so many others are there for those who like the old tried and true desktop paradigm. Linux is about having that choice so somebody has to be meaningfully differect and to try to cater to different audiences. Clearly the Gnome team figures computing is moving away from the desktop and that to remain relevant in the long-term future they need to do things differently.

As power users/programmers/enthusiasts perhaps these observations are lost on us becasue we LIKE and WANT TO use our PCs--most people use computers because they HAVE to (or had to). To do everyday office tasks you needed a PC, to browse theinternet, send emails and so on you needed a PC, but these days you don't. Smartphones and tablets are new forms of computing that are more convenient, easier and generally just more desirable for the general public to use for everyday tasks. Linux has to be there to be relevant--it certainly won't be if it sticks with traditional paradigms and slowly evolves. And Linux IS more relevant to cmputing than ever before--it is a dominant force on servers, and it is embedded it our televisions, is the basis for the leading smartphone platform and so on. And how many of those examples of end-user Linux systems uses XFCE or KDE...almost none. They all are smartpones and tablets with Android interfaces, or are web-platform kiosks or have custom interfaces. If you think about it you can understand why the Gnome team took the risk of junpong the shark to stay relevant.

...into an anti-Tory bitchfest. It's insulting to those tho actually ARE oppressed in places from China and Cuba to Sudan and Syria and all in between. C-30 erodes our privacy rights but to say we are on the path to self destrucion at the hands of an insane tyrant is a really big stretch.

Also to clarify, for those who started foaming a the mouth when they saw "C-30" and stopped reading the rest of the article, this "internet security tax" has not been proposed by anyone in government nor by those in the telecoms industry. This was an idea presented by Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police and them alone. Indeed it is not a brand-new idea for them--they've advocated extraction of funds from taxpayers for this purpose in some form or another a time or two before. The Conservatice covernment, as with previous Liberal governments and the NDP opposition have all rejected the CACP's proposals, including this one.

The fact that the Conservatives are preoccupied with "law and order" issues seems to have brought on the assumption that they must be unabashed supporters of the CACP and thus whatever brainwave the CACP has is going to be well received. Those who are Canadian and follow Canadian politics know that the Tories and the CACP do not see eye to eye an quite a number of issues. Most notably the CACP steadfastly advocated the creation and expansion of the federal long gun registry but the Tory government dismantled it. On that issue, the idea of creating a database of long guns (hunting and target shoting rifles, etc) and their owners with unfettered access by police came about through consultations the Liberal government had with the CACP, who presented it as the solution to prevent massacres like the one at Ecole Polytecnique (the incident that called on government to come up with expanded gun control measures in the first place).

But there are a few things that make a "Security tax" on internet use a non-starter:

1. the Tories have made a big effort to present themselves as "anti-tax"--whether you think they are serious or not they advocate public spending restraint over unfettered "stimulous spending" and higher taxation. It would be pretty bad optics to start imposing a tax on internet use

2. Canadians complain about the relatively high cost of telecom services (with good reason), and the government has been making chages in the industry to increase competition and lower costs (spectrum auctions that limit incumbants ability to steamroll over new competition, relaxation of foreign ownership regulations to permit upstarts like Wind Mobile from being blocked or facing bigger hurdles, etc). Imposing taxes on internet use, for any purpose, runs counter to this commitment and would be taken very poorly by the public at large. Not only that, incumbants and new players in the telecom industry alike are already aggravated at the prospect of being responsible to monitor internet traffic for police--having to aggravate their customers with another fee/tax just furthers that.

3. It runs counter to the "small c" conservative philosophy that many of the Tories core supporters have concerning taxation--that is that the people using somehting should be the ones paying for it. That is why they always talk about replacing some broad tax with "user fees". ISP's customers already pay to access the internet, and if the police want to access ISP customers' internet too, well the police should be the ones covering that cost.

4. Many western supporters of the NEW tories--the "old Reform Party" ones most passionate about getting rid of things like the gun registry and the Wheat Board monopoly, are offended by what C-30 represents--just like gun control it treats innocent people like criminals--the gun registry assumed that all people who would own a gun must be intent on using it to commit crimes and so they all must register with the government at great expense to that police can check up on them whenever they feel like it. Bill C-30 assumes all internet users could be up to no good and that at great expense, all internet users must submit to constant monitoring by police so they can keep us in line.

It is this not-insignificant contingent of core Tory supporters who are rather upset at Bill C-30 as a whole, and which for some reason doesn't get a lot of press, which presents the biggest potential obstacle to passage of C-30. The "inner circle" of the government doesn't take mainstream media very seriously, and will often resist in the face of "widespread criticism" driven by the press. While "public" backlash certainly was a factor in the second look at C-30, it looks to me like the TRUELY biggest factor in the government dialling back its rhetoric and pulling C-30 back for a more considered discussion was the not-so-public backlash from within the Tory caucus and those closer to the grassroots--especially those party members/activists who initially became politically involved with the Reform Party (a populist party which broke away from the now-defunct Progressive-Conservatives in the 1980s).

The prime minister himself was first elected as a member of the Reform party, and though he sadly doesn't prescribe to the more populist ideals of the old Reform party he is very keenly aware of the consequenses of accravating your core support past certain limits, because he was very closely involved with the movement that formed that led to the destruction of the OLD tory Party brought on when Mulroney went over the line alienating his own western base (the Reform party started as a protest against some key Mulroney-era policies, notably the implmentation of the GST consumption tax and the Meech Lake Accord--a set of constitutional amendments made in an effort to have Quebec formally sign the constitution that was repatriated from the UK in 1981--the accord was thought to too heavily favour Quebec's wishes over those of other provinces and groups).

If there is ANYONE that Harper would listen to it would be those politically involved people with past Reform Party involvement--because they know it is possible to take down a mainline party with a solid majority in both houses of parliament if you really want to. The key to pushing C-30 off the table entirely would probably be mobilisation of those "Reformer" types. The older, greyer and less internet-savvy Reformers may be blinded by the "catch the pedophiles" marketing of this bill which is why it managed to get created in the first place. If it is explained to them as I have described here--that it is basically "the gun registry for the Internet"--then you would stand the best chance of getting their attention.

There should be a "-1 senseless partisan rhetoric" moderation option. After just a few years of minorty-party rule political discourse in Canada has descended to playground fistfights and bickering--quite sad really.

How soon people forget what it is like to have a majority government in parliament. "PM Harper is a tyrant who will stop at nothing to impose his hidden agenda/corporate lobby buddies wishes/kitten-killing campaign/etc" blah blah blah. Same could've been said about Cretien, or Mulroney, or Trudeau. Big effin deal...Grit or Tory Same Old Story. This is a Tory majority parliament and thus committees are Tory-dominated. Inevitably opposition party amendments will be rejected. If the media content industry really WERE "Harper's corporate buddies" then all those additional requests from industry lobbyists could have easily sailed through, but they didn't. There is no reason at all to "try again in a few months" and every reason to push through contentious legislation you really want RIGHT NOW--early in the government's term so that the electorate's shot memory is more likely to have purged the event.

It is quite clear that SOPA-style control of information is not ever coming back in the life of this government. If there is no appetite to pass such distasteful legislation at this stage in the game--if they fear the wrath of the electorate that much--then it is a completely dead issue at LEAST until the next election. Furthermore copyright legislation will NOT be revisited even after the 2015 election--unless there is extremely concerted, international pressure to do so (and if there is such pressure it won't matter even if it is the Tories or another party who wins election--even the NDP could be coercced by such pressure).

Anti-Tory snipers here should make themselves more familiar with the history of copyright reform in Canada. The whole process started when the LIBERAL gov't of Jean Cretien chose to ratify the WIPO copyrigt treaty in the 1990s. Since that time the pressure has been on from WIPO and Hollywood lobbyists to have Canada "modernise" their copyright laws (ie. in a DMCA-like way). WIPO and the global copyright lobby were already growing very impatient with Canada by the time the next LIBERAL gov't of Paul Martin introduced C-60. It was a minority gov't so C-60 died on the order paper when a no-confidence motion was passed.

Minor adjustments were made and the bill was re-introduced with only minor revision by the CONSERVATIVE minority government as C-61...it too died on the order paper after an election of another minority parliament. The 3rd minority parliament introduced C-32 (tories again) and yet again it ALSO died on the order paper when the election was called.

The grits have quietly supported these bills all along this process, and if Harper really wanted to it could've passed fairly easily with tory-grit support, but with all the minority governments and so many more "important" issues around economy, social programs, taxation, law-and-order and so on it never moved up the order paper fast enough. And all along this long and varied path taken by C-60/61/32/11 the most draconian aspects largely fell away, and copyright lobbying was largely kept at bay. The only significant parts with teeth that are left and are of real concern are the anti-circumvention provisions. But guess what? The Liberals would've passed those just the same. Even the NDP which adamantly oppose them would've eventually done so if they ever came to power. Why is that? Because that is the core of what Canada MUST put into law to meet its obligations under the WIPO copyright treaty signed by Cretien all those years ago. From what I understand Canada's commitment is pretty iron-clad there--can't even weasel out like they did on Kyoto (which had an exit clause of sorts that Canada chose to use).

So whatever you think about Harper and his merry band of Tories it really is remarkable--and a relief--that they really DID listen to the right people here, regardless of who was in power. There seems to have been a pretty concerted effort to make the most minimally intrusive commmitment to WIPO that they could even though they really didn't have to.

Watch the Knight-Ridder video onYouTube. The fact that Apple was not the first to create an oversized PDA is not in dispute. This is a case involving industrial design--Apple accuses Samsung of copying basically the "look and feel" of the iPad specifically. K-R's "newspaper tablet" design bears a strong resemblance to the iPad--much more so than the Newton devices.

Besides that, everyone knows Alan Kay invented the tablet computer design in the 1960's. I personally don't believe the iPad design is patentable and it was a mistake to grant those design patents in the first place.