Au contraire - this is actually a pretty rare example of enforcing the rule of law equally on people and multinational corporations. Here's how:

1. Apple and Ireland negotiated these deals over a period of several months.
2. At the time these deals were negotiated, Ireland was already a signatory of the EU rules (the EU was called EEC back then).
3. Ireland was, and always has been, free to walk away from the EEC (now the EU) just like Britain.
4. The EEC rules regarding these matters were common knowledge.
5. Individuals can't use ignorance of the law as a legal defense and neither can companies, which is fair.
6. Under the terms of the deal Apple negotiated with Ireland, Apple has been paying taxes for goods sold in Ireland only while paying 0 taxes on goods sold in the rest of the EU (ignorance my ass).
7. Apple has been told to pay taxes which it has been avoiding.
8. No fines or other legal sanctions have been imposed on Apple.
9. Ireland might get fined by the EU once the legal process has been completed (which is why they're running around like headless chickens).

If there was less overall pandering to multinational corporations, the quality of life of the people would improve as opposed to the current situation where these corporations have hundreds of billions of dollars stashed away in some tax haven (not certain but it seems like a dick waving contest at this point). No idea where you got 'end of "Rule of Law"' from this entire debacle or how you can think of Apple as some sort of a victim here, please feel free to elaborate.

Luckily I have always used KDE so getting focus-follows-mouse to work has never been that much of an issue for me. Even got it to work on Windows 7 (through several registry hacks).

I tried to get KDE to build on OS X as a last ditch effort, ran into dependency hell which I couldn't resolve despite a lot of effort and in the end figured that it was probably not worth the time I was pouring into it.

The only real gripe I have with Linux is the problems SystemD is introducing by trying to 'correct' the Unix way of doing things.

Pretty much all the games I want to play these days are available on steam with Linux support (I am probably in the minority there but as long as I can get my fix, I'm not fussed).

Sorry for the delayed reply, been very busy.

When I said I wanted a panel on both screen, I meant something like what KDE has but since you're not a Linux person, you can think of the Windows 7 panel (which has the start button, the taskbar, notifications tray and a clock) but where Windows 7 only lets you have the panel on the primary display, I want it on both displays (and the taskbar on each panel to display programs that are running on that screen). The only alternative to the standard dock that OS X comes with that came close to what I wanted was uBar but I could only get it to display on one of the screens instead of both of them (I was using a free trial, it costs $20).

I can't stand docks (on any operating system). I don't need that many applications permanently pinned to an edge of the screen, I need Netbeans or Ninja IDE along with Firefox and/or Chrom(e)(ium) and maybe one or more of GIMP, LibreOffice and a virtual machine. The whole concept seemed broken and wasteful to me and even when I removed all the unnecessary items from the dock and left only the ones I wanted, the windows of the same applications were still grouped together into a single item on the dock instead of having multiple entries despite acres of space (eg if I had 5 windows of Firefox, there was a single firefox icon which I had to click to get to a list of the windows that were open).

With focus-follows-mouse, I got it working through one of the terminal solutions but the experience was sub-optimal (at best). The unified menubar made it nearly impossible to use and in the end I just gave up. I did not come across BinaryBakery but that does seem interesting.

If I have to whip out XCode to roll my own solution, how is it different from what I have to do with Linux (where KDE has me covered on the GUI side of things but I need to faff around with config files to get hibernation working, probably won't be an issue if I bought a Dell with Ubuntu or a System 76)?

I understand that no OS can cater to everyones needs/wishes but I think this is not an improvement over what I have at the moment, it actually seems more painful. Won't you agree?

I am writing this from a laptop running Kubuntu 16.04 and while there are things which I find inconvenient/annoying, I am generally pretty happy with the overall experience.

I am not trying to troll you but I like my computer's environment set a particular way and I am actually genuinely interested in knowing if the OSX GUI can now support my workflow instead of me having to adapt so here goes; I use a multi-monitor setup with a panel on both screens, each of the panels has its own Application launcher, taskbar (which shows only applications from the screen the panel is on and does not autosort/group applications) and a notifications tray and I like to use focus-follows-mouse instead of click-to-focus. Last time I checked (with Yosemite, a friend let me keep their old Mac Book Pro for a month to play with), OSX wouldn't let me do either of these things (I could not get the dock to show up on both screens or get it to not group windows of the same application together and even when i eventually managed to get focus-follows-mouse working, the unified toolbar (which I couldn't switch off) made it nearly impossible to use). I realise someone somewhere might think that the interface of OS X is perfect but as far as I am concerned, I could not see myself using it in it's default configuration and since I couldn't modify it either, I didn't really see the point of getting a Mac if I was going to install Kubuntu on it at the end of the day anyway.

I never said there were no good charities or that giving to charities was a bad or unacceptable thing...I have a direct debit set up with a couple of charities that I support (two cancer research/treatment non-profits, one disaster relief charity).

What I was pointing out was the utter stupidity of what the AC was saying, who decides what charities help people more? There are charities which provide medical aid or housing or legal aid or food or an education or a myriad of other services/products to the underprivileged, who decides which of these are more deserving of someone's money? The AC? I don't think so.

Also, how is giving to charitable entities the same thing as making a political donation? If I decide to donate to a politician, it'd be to help a candidate who at least claims to hold the same ideals I have, it might not pan out or it might, but doing nothing and hoping for things to change is just plain dumb. I guess the only people who think that giving to a politician in the hopes of effecting change are either the people who think that the world as it is today is perfectly fine and does not need to change or the people who are so extremely dejected that they feel that no matter what someone does, nothing would ever change. If the AC falls into the first category then they are a fucking imbecile whereas if they fall into the second category, they need a psych eval and probably should be placed in a padded white room before all that anger and frustration boils over and makes them do something extreme!

O wise one, since you clearly know what charities one should be donating to, please be kind enough to provide a list of the charities you approve of and that you think actually help people. The rest of humanity would be indebted to you for generations to come...

Who's talking about playing a song someone bought for $1 in a theater you pillock? Besides lacking any common sense, you clearly aren't very good at reading comprehension, are you?

Let me try and spell it out for you, this time actually try reading and understanding (I know that will be hard for someone like yourself but try nonetheless) what's being said before responding, so here goes:

If someone licenses a MOVIE to play in a theater they own, on top of the licensing fees they've already paid for the movie, they have to pay a separate licensing fee for the MUSIC CONTAINED IN THAT MOVIE.

Now go ahead and explain to the rest of us who is stealing from whom in this particular case. I'll wait

or maybe it's like saying music is copyrightable so if you play a movie in a theater you own, an army of lawyers will descend on you unless you pay separate licensing fee for the music in the movie. LOOL. Oh, whoops, wait a sec, that one actually does happen.

I haven't ever accused anyone of being a shill, you just might become the person to win that honour

bwahahaaa :-D BEST RANT EVER...

Some free advice, ignore that idiot...he thinks the Left is responsible for everything from terrorism to war to malaria and pneumonia. He always finds a way to whine about the Left even if everyone else is talking about space travel or operating systems.

Additionally, America doesn't have a political left (the way the rest of the world perceives left anyway). You have far-right (the Republicans) and centre-right (the Democrats) so I have no idea what, how or why you have a beef with the Left (since you are always whining and moaning about Left this, Left that so it is only natural that I presume that you have some grudge against what you perceive to be the Left), methinks you should be mad at some shade of Right!

Left? You mean to tell me that the right has never used 'Think of the children' for scaremongering to push asinine laws through?

While I think this lawsuit and the court's decision are absolutely bonkers and the right to privacy is somewhat curtailed in a public setting (such as in markets, parks, bus/train terminals etc), I do think everyone has a right to privacy (for instance in their homes, in private gatherings, in personal communications, etc).

I, for one, would hate it if someone were constantly snooping on me while I was sat in my home minding my own business, won't you?.

As a Shi'ite Muslim, I find your drivel extremely offensive...

As a Pakistani Shi'ite Muslim, I think you need to get institutionalised before your paranoia makes you harm some innocent people based on your notion of what religion they adhere to.

Additionally, but equally importantly, you sound exactly like the terrorists you are so angry at or afraid of (and apparently you don't realise that Shi'ites, despite being a different sect, are also Muslims).

I definitely do not like Systemd but there is absolutely nothing wrong with MySql unit files in Ubuntu (typing this on Kubuntu 15.10 with Kubuntu 16.04 running in a vm under virtual box, both the guest and the host have the complete LAMP stack running)...that user was either trolling or had no idea what they were talking about and were rightly buried.

Dont get me wrong, I like XFCE but it is not very convenient when used with a multi-monitor setup. After each restart, I had to manually tweak the panel on the second screen to make it display where I wanted it displayed with the applets I wanted in the panel. With KDE, that is not an issue and although KDE is not perfect either, it keeps forgetting the positions of application windows, compared to XFCE it is a lot more convenient.

Also, I haven't noticed any lag or low responsiveness on my primary laptop with an Intel 4700qm processor, 16GB ram, 500GB mSata SSD (aftermarket), 1TB HDD, Intel 4600 graphics (I think) or on my very old (from 2007) laptop with an Intel Core 2 Duo 7200 processor, 2 GB ram, 120GB HDD and Intel integrated graphics. The new laptop actually boots up in under 30 seconds (and that too with the boot sector on the 1TB mag HDD) and even with the SSD, was just over $1000. I normally have Netbeans, a bucketful of tabs in Firefox and Chromium and GIMP (or a Windows 7 instance in VirtualBox with Photoshop) running on the current laptop (or if I am using the older laptop, Netbeans and dozen or so tabs in Chromium or Firefox with GIMP).

Most cheap laptops being sold these days ($350 to $500) are at least as powerful as my old laptop so could you please elaborate the conditions under which you experience lag with KDE? I would honestly like to know the workload which causes KDE to become a stuttering mess (so I can avoid it if at all possible).