I think the AC makes a good point, in that if schools stuck to public domain works for teaching purposes, there'd be more teaching and less pushing of modern agendas.

But teachers could make better choices regardless. A lot of the novels we had to study in junior high onward were, bluntly, dull. That does nothing to encourage kids to read. There are plenty of classics that would attract young readers, if only they knew they existed. Why must it be The Scarlet Letter? why not Scaramouche, which is at least a fun read? or if you want symbolism and social themes, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, where at least something happens to keep young minds attentive (I read it when I was 12, so it couldn't be too bad for that). My 8th grade teacher understood this, which was why our studied classic was The Scarlet Pimpernel.

General fiction is a much larger market. But I've yet to see anything that called itself "speculative fiction" that I cared for, so I'll consider myself warned.

Angry? No. I just think it's a crap UI, so I stick with KDE on Linux boxen.

I guess they want to make it illegal to protect yourself and your data from intruders and thieves.

Zieg Heil, Mein Fuhrer!

Nice theory, but you're assuming the dashboard is only as big as the screen. That's a very poor assumption, especially if the user is on a 720p display. As to printing out the web page, I've had no end of problems printing out dynamically-generated pages over the years.

Reports can be saved. You can't save your current view of a dashboard.

The comment on "multi-touch" tells me all I need to know about this release: it's targetted at touch screens.

Not "normal" desktops.

No wonder Gnome 3 sucks so heinously. It's the Linux version of Windows 8.

Which viruses, and which antibiotics? Is it the virus itself or does it rely on a host that's susceptible to antibiotics?

Oh, then my WinME definitely had some VxD drivers, cuz I recall it fishing a Win95 driver out of several options via pawing thru INI files (I can't recall if this was for the SCSI card or the sound card), and the Matrox vidcard definitely had the old type. Whether it had any of the WdM type, then ... dunno. Mainboard was a Tyan server board which was rock solid (and did not have the rollover bug -- didja know that's actually in the hardware, and in only about half the hardware -- Windows just triggered it), and that helps under any circumstances. I'd seen others that were dead-stable too, even on seriously junk hardware like Packard Smell... which woulda had all older drivers and OS never touched since it left the factory.

Main reason I keep looking at linux (other than masochism) is that it's good to have alternatives, but as you say it's never really going to be viable for the masses unless and until they restructure the driver mess, and stop "removing" drivers for older hardware (while saying how good it is for old hardware, WTF? Few versions back Ubuntu pulled support for all vidcards over 5 years old!) ... dandy for a headless server that does one job. Not so dandy for people with random hardware that does many tasks. It needs a wrapper so it can run any damn drivers including Windows drivers, instead of trying to force everyone to come to them with a linux driver.... and keep it updated. If it's supposed to be the OS for everyone, then stop locking out anyone who won't bow to your system, and to the GPL (which in its current incarnation is coersion, not 'freedom'. The BSD license is truly free.)

I've often said that developers should have to work on the slowest hardware that will even run their programs, so they know how the rest of us feel. The fullblown linux desktops are a prime example.

Yeah, I've heard all the excuses... they all boil down to "works for me, sucks to be you". That's not going to draw everyday users, tho it may draw ivory-tower bigots. It's been what, 20 years now? and it still has only about 1% of desktop users. You'd think that alone would cue 'em they're goin' at it wrong if they truly want to attract ordinary users. Most of us don't run server OSs. If you're only going for the server market (and there'd be nothing wrong with that, BSD as an example), admit it and stop bullshitting the rest of us.

All I've seen about Win9 so far is that it kinda reverts to Win7 in the interface dept (at least MS eventually learns from their mistakes, and does something about it!). What's this about $40 or even free?

"You have already reached your quota for non-Canadian content. We now present reruns of 'The Beachcombers' whether you like it or not."

There must be a lot of overly sensitive Gnome developers here today. I crack wise about how I feel about Gnome 3, and that's "flamebait" because the poor nancy-boys can't handle the fact that their GUI *does* suck farts off dead chickens in August. And if you've ever smelt a rotting dead chicken in the August heat, you'd know just how vile and revolting that description is.

And if you've ever tried to use Gnome 3, you know how accurate that description is.

Communications from planetary surfaces, anyone?

Hunh.

And here I always thought it was about entertaining me with an engrossing "what if..." story.

Another fool who thought people would be impressed by their PhD.

Get over yourself. Nobody outside of the research world gives a shit. In fact, most companies will avoid interviewing or hiring you because you're going to expect higher pay for your education while having spent less time learning the craft of programming than someone who got into the job market after their BSc. (or equivalent.)

Regardless of the distro, I install KDE and I'm good to go. The only thing I use the "default" GUI for is any tools that aren't portable.

Gnome 3 sucks farts off dead chickens in August... :P