And who could realistically try to replace oil (someone had this idea about hybrid cars, which is a transition stage), DDT (somebody did...), horse-trained carriages (I had this idea about a thing named "car")... do you really need the water at your throat to start changing your conservative views, right? Sheesh, fortunately there are people who try to make the world better, not just accept the status quo.

They are proposing to stop building new plants, so they will have to find an alternative for an increasing demand. That will probably foster research on renewable energies, which by the way seem to create much more job employment.

If you never try, you'll never know.

And, by the way, the comment "You can't expect to shut the country down on calm/cloudy days", if it was referring to solar power, is amazingly incorrect if you build your grid properly. (Actually, if it is cloudy because of a natural disaster, I would prefer to be near a solar grid than to Fukushima, but my first complaint about nuclear power is about it's exceptionally uneconomical background, not about the health hazards).

But, not everyone can be brilliant. Isn't one of the purposes of education to teach people, even so-so ones, a job?

Actually, no, it isn't. Well, it's an half truth: let's say that as far as higher education is concerned, you are wrong. It's better that untalented or disinterested people go immediately to work on less-qualified jobs (clerks, factory workers, etc.) because: a) we need someone to do also that, and b) it will make life easier for the rest and c) we don't have the money to pay everyone as if it were a graduate.

Access to classes up to high school should be open to anyone, and they should teach everyone how to tackle a job on generic terms (as well as understand your rights and duties as an effective citizen). From there onwards, it's only an extra burden on your taxes to maintain who has no talent.

People with merit, however, should be able to access the higher levels of education independently from their income. That's why you have scholarship (I am not claiming the system works right now, mind you, just that the mechanism is there).

Oh, for trolling sake. Then write your own desktop environment. I hate XFCE and KDE4, but love gnome-shell, for instance. If you are not happy with the Desktop Summit contents, don't go there, or post here. Why wasting bytes here when you have all the choice you need (including cranking up some code?). These people put a lot of effort into a release, and the summit is a great occasion to sit down and try to understand what was rushed, what worked well, etc.

This is free software. Don't like it? Fork it.

Do you think that any high-school student receiving a free console will study anything for the next year?

Of course, you might point out that most of these students already own a console (often a Xbox, too). Then these might be sold on eBay to Taiwanese students, and at least it's worth 40-50 $.

The only downside is that there isn't a client for this. Instead, Linux and Mac users need to install a Google Talk video and voice plug-in to their Web browsers.

Actually, this is not entirely true. I've managed to get my Skype account deleted definitively exactly today, but I'm using Empathy 3.x since a couple of weeks to make daily voice and video calls. Video is actually a bit shakey, but voice is okay. This is for the on-line VoIP part. There have been pointers that Empathy might be estended to support landline calls too, it's just matter of time.

Hah, they should try that test with us GNU/Linux users on Slashdot.

We probably qualify directly as saints.

You are insulting the legal system in a full-fledged attempt to mockery, but I can't read any rationale among your words why you are doing that.

If you just criticize them, and don't explain why you are doing it (I'm sorry, it is not obvious to me), then you are trolling.

Your reply to Livius below doesn't help to make things clearer.

It'd be time for some people to learn how to argument their positions, instead to spit venom on anything moving nearby.

Troll. If you think that a license does not suit you, do not use it, use another one. Nobody is taking away your freedom as a developer to choose the license you prefer, or to write your own implementation. But as a developer myself, I don't see why you should benefit from my code, my hard work and my creativeness, close-source it, and invest maybe some marketing resources in it to drive me out of the market.

Fantasy? No. Personal experience. A loss of several thousands of euro from my part. So, keep your BSD license, I'll keep my GPL, thanks.

Well, most of those projects have satisfying alternatives, except one (at least for me): Banshee. Rhythmbox just plainly sucks in comparison.

• Beagle: is it widespread anymore? I thought Tracker did win the race.
• GNOME Do: use Kupfer or Synapse. As soon as they get momentum, more plugins will be available.
• Pinta: do we *really* need paintbrush ported to GNOME? I guess Inkscape can be fun for kids anyway.
• F-Spot: ugly and slow piece of software. I switched to Shotwell a lot of time ago.
• Gbrainy: no real alternative in the same class, but it is not too big to perform a port.
• MonoTorrent: Transmission works for me. Other alternatives abound.
• Tomboy: use Gnote.

I am not claiming the alternatives are perfect (nor the originals). But they can quickly improve if needed.

In my opinion, it is time Vala developers write a decent enough manual for it (improve the main points that undermine its use), and the free world switches to it. It works well, it is fast, and you can link other C libraries to your Vala programs. FLOSS has reached some sort of maturity where it can produce something good without looking at Microsoft or the now-defunct Sun to do it for us.

Sony last week said it had encrypted credit card data

...with rot13.