*** You guys are missing the point. ***

Are we? What you describe is going into a venue in zombie mode and just do the first thing that pops up in your head. Yeah, one can live that way and always feel fulfilled with the "knowledge" that you "got what you wanted", while spending an unnecessary fortune on overpriced products and services.

While I do use ad-blockers and don't watch to much television these days, I still see and hear ads. They are sometimes amusing, sometimes annoying and most of the time completely forgetable. I haven't found myself with a bag of groceries yet where the thing was overflowing with brandname products.

When I go shopping I think in product categories. What kinds of products do I need? Who sells that the cheapest, with acceptable quality? With every item I get that is not on the shopping list I stop and force myself to think, do I really need what I just fetched off the shelf? Most of the time it is not a top brand item, but I'll put it back all the same if it doesn't make sense to purchase. (But yeah, this is a little spur of the moment influencing by placement and packaging...)

Bigger purchases I might also think about what was advertised, but I always research the range of products and I purchase that which has good reviews online and has the most bang for the buck. If I was influenced by mass advertising, my tv would have been a Samsung (as that is being spammed in The Netherlands). My current TV is an LG, not because it was an LG, but because it had the right specs and the right price.

The dual licensing of Qt came after the creation of the Gnome DE. Before that the Qt license was "free" (no licensing fees) for non-commercial use, but not FOSS and that was the point of contention.

Stallman is OK with dual licensing, as it is up to the licensee to go with the closed license. The FOSS licensed variant makes sure that one can choose which.

*** Overall mandatory participation systems are a better way ***

Assuming the "voters" can be arsed to look up the politicians and the election programs, instead of just resentfully hauling their carcasses into a voting booth and crossing one of the pretty check boxes or just ticking the mark at the party that the family has alway voted for.

Politics and elections are like Russian salad. Voting determines the ratios of the constituent ingredients/parties, but at the end of the day you get the same old Russian salad.

Automation will free us up to do things we'd rather do.

My my, what positivity. Automation will label those out of a job as just another unnecessary mouth to feed.

A lack of tech knowledge is therefore pretty unforgivable

Have you ever seen a CEO (or other executive) do something themselves that isn't a braindead easy and canned procedure on a computer? Any time it requires a modicum of application knowledge and a smidge of creativity, they come running to their underlings to delegate the task.

This is also typical:

[T]he survey of 436 global business leaders finds that only 23% are confident their organizations have the knowledge and skills to succeed in the digital aspects of their business.

The organisation as a whole probably has enough knowledge present to adequately cope with digital demands, but this knowledge is never tapped, because most of it isn't formalised in a certificate or diploma, so it doesn't officially exist. Therefore the employees are digital peasants and the company is doomed.

Seems to me like a problem solved. Everybody happy.

Were big, we own this shit, we don't want to create new stuff, we want to be paid in perpetuity!

- mob of Corporate Leeches

You forget one thing. If copyright protection is dead, then it doesn't matter if you only distribute binaries.

Take as much visible source as you like. Put it in binaries with your own "secret" sauce. People who want human readable source will decompile your binaries (even obfuscated ones) and extract any valuable bits you came up with. With impunity.

It works both ways. Either you have protections or no one has. Don't try to hide behind contract law. One leaked copy and one breach of contract later, everyone who wasn't a party to the contract can do whatever they want.

Being identified and recognized are two different things in this context. Osama may well have been identified by practically anyone and their dog as the leader within Al Qaida. But being identified as a leader of something doesn't mean that the thing that is been led is also recognized.

When it comes to politics and nation states, being recognized by the international community means to be accepted as a legitimate entity. A recognized state is sovereign and its leader considered the head of state. Osama bin Laden's band of extremists were neither sovereign nor was Osama bin Laden recognized as a head of state.

^^Absolutely this. SSD's have proven themselves to be reliable enough and plenty fast, but they are so anemic in size in relation to price that they are realistically only interesting to use as a system disk.

That is entirely possible. It could be that consumer workloads aren't heavy enough to make any meaningful use of the faster speed of PCIe SSD's. In that case, there won't be any noticable difference between a SATA SSD and A PCIe one. Look at it like this. If you have a continuous high volume, high throughput load then a faster SSD will make a difference as it can shift more data per second then a slower one. If you only have occasional bursts of activity, like loading an office suite, the difference will not be that noticable. If a faster SDD can load an office suite in 19 seconds instead of 21, a user won't notice this as a significant improvement.

Well, you could always switch and be a lab rat with us...

Sounds like a match...

Those are both more than 20 years ago, making it "decades."

Bzzt. Wrong! the first serious desktop systems were started in 1999 (NOFI WM users). So a mere 15 years.

Pre-KDE and pre-Gnome systems were more akin MS-DOS with Windows 3.11, feature wise.

The computer is a tool that should enable us to spend more time accomplishing what we want, not configuring a window manager to use the full resolution of my display, or figuring out that Gnome looks horrible while KDE feels slow on my system, or my trackpad isn't working. (These are all actual experiences I have had installing different versions of Ubuntu on one system, thanks to its poor support.)

You are comparing preloaded machines to a home install. Apples (no pun intended) and oranges.

I should be able to make one purchase with something that is cutting edge if I want.

What is stopping you? Several Linux shops sell high-end machines with linux preloaded and supported. (No, it is easier to abuse the comparison of a home install, on hardware not specifically selected to be supported in kernel by Linux, to preloaded OEM machines.)

Now, before you call me an Apple fanboy, I should let you know that I have been a Linux advocate since 98' at the tender age of 16.

What you did in the past is irrelevant. Currently you are cherry picking points to paint the picture you want and in the process you shit all over Linux.