"Nobody actually writes towards Xlib" - so GNOME, KDE, etc. are "nobody"? X clients have used toolkits since almost the beginning; Xt, Xaw, Motif, etc. existed a long time ago.

If nobody uses the original font functionality, then deprecate it and move on. When something is obsolete in the Linux or BSD kernels, the code is retired; they don't throw the whole kernel out and start over.

VNC is completely different from X and inferior in almost every way. For one thing, rather than just run an application on a system and export its display, you have to run a virtual X server (with all of its overhead such as a window manager) and then screen-scrape the virtual screen and export it. It is impossible for VNC to have any of the drag-and-drop or cut-and-paste functionality you criticize in X.

I suggest you go read Linus' original announcement for the Linux kernel. I'm betting you aren't running a single-processor i386 system, and you probably don't have any MFM hard drives. Support evolves over time without replacing the whole thing. The problem with "targeted at modern hardware" is that there's a lot of what you might not consider "modern hardware" still in use.

Why? What part of "legacy code" automatically means "toss [it] out"? The Linux kernel is over 20 years old, and the core BSD code is older than that. Do you also want to just throw them out and start over from scratch because they're old? Now, I agree with you that something that is less functional than its predecessor should not be adopted as its replacement, but I hate the assumption that "old == replace from scratch" that seems to be common in software development (especially in the open source/free software community).

I have tools in my toolbox that belonged to my grandfather, and my father has tools from his grandfather (100+ years old). We still use them because they work. We have other tools that we've bought to perform other tasks, but the old tools are not replaced just because they are old.

No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow.

All modern power generating plants that use fuel (as opposed to hydro, wind, etc.) work basically the same way. They use a fuel to generate heat (burn coal or gas, create nuclear fission), heat water to steam, and use steam to turn turbines. The water is then cooled and returned to its source, usually a river or lake. All such power plants have problems when the incoming water is too warm or they cannot cool it sufficiently before discharging it.

The only difference between a nuclear plant and a coal/gas plant is that a nuclear plant can concentrate more generating capacity at a single location, which then can require more water.

Having replaced a power window motor and (in a different car) repaired the track for a crank window, there isn't a significant difference in weight (maybe a couple of pounds per door). With a crank, you have to have a lever, a bearing, and a gearing mechanism; with a power window, you have a light-weight switch and a small motor (usually sized for direct drive). The rest is pretty much the same.

Air conditioning isn't an option in hot climates if you spend much time in the car, and efficiencies of scale (and resale value) pretty much dictate it be standard across the board. Studies have shown that driving with the windows down increases drag in modern aerodynamic cars, affecting mileage more than the engine load and additional weight of the A/C system (which again isn't all that much, less than one adult passenger by a good bit). Also, my 1977 Honda CVCC Wagon got 30 MPG with an A/C (a dealer add-on which was not designed into the car).

Modern safety features such as air bags, anti-lock brakes, and crumple zones built into the frame add weight, but I'll take that weight. If I'd been hit by a truck in that old Honda, I'd have been dead. Today, in a Honda Fit (a similar sized car), you'd have a good chance of coming out with only minor injuries. The curb weight on the old Honda was around 1900 pounds, while the Fit (with a manual transmission) is 2500. The mileage in the Fit is a little bit better than the 1977 Wagon and has lower emissions.

I expect T-Mobile will still be sold, just not to another major mobile phone provider. I wouldn't be surprised if CenturyLink ends up buying them; they are the largest telecom company without a mobile presence.

There's too many customers and too much spectrum for them to just be shut down. They're even still showing growth, just not as much as AT&T and Verizon (and not as much as Deutsche Telekom would like).

Don't you mean box?

I bet you still drive a car with a four-cycle engine, which is 19th century technology. Your car has some improvements, but nothing much original.

Hey, that's my dad you're talking about! Dad worked on what was then called the J-2X (a different program from the current J-2X) during the Saturn program, and is still working for NASA on the new vehicles.

It also allows you to see who sold your email and/or who has been compromised. I have a personal domain for email, and I use a different address for just about everything (and they're usually pretty unique, so not found by address harvesting). I am now getting a lot of spam at the address I gave to Linux Journal; since they went online-only and I cancelled my subscription, I killed that address.

I also had a year of free credit monitoring with one of the "big three" credit agencies (due to somebody else's database compromise), and now (shortly after the year passed and I didn't agree to pay for continuing monitoring) that address is getting spam. Either they sold it, or their database has been compromised. Either way, it gives me SUCH a good feeling about their reliability!

I switched to XFCE (on Fedora 15). It is similar to the GNOME 2 "look and feel", especially if you spend just a little bit of time moving things around (although the default XFCE "look" isn't bad either).

I work for an independent ISP that wholesales BellSouth (AT&T) DSL service. When we order a 6m down/512k up circuit, the sync rates are up to 8128k down and 512k up. I guess that's because most end users still primarily care about the download speed (as long as Netflix works they're happy I suppose).

When a computer that could display 320x200 video cost $3000+, weighed 30 pounds, and covered a typical desk, your assumption was correct. Now you can (obviously) get a compact, lightweight, and inexpensive general purpose computer instead.

If you run a special-purpose system with no OS, you have to write code to handle everything (communications, interrupt handling, etc.). When you can get enough computing power in a small enough package, it cuts development and maintenance time significantly because you can use a general purpose OS to handle all the normal stuff, develop on a standard system, use standard libraries, etc. If there's a bug in your home-grown, hand developed USB device manager, you could spend days trying to track it down. Odds are, there aren't many bugs in the basic I/O parts of the Linux kernel, but if there are, somebody else has probably found them and you can "yum update" to get the fix.

Why do so many home/small business routers/firewalls run Linux, rather than develop a custom networking OS? Because the CPU and RAM needed to run Linux is cheaper than the development time to write and maintain a custom OS. The same is true of this: if you can get a fast-enough Linux-on-a-stick system for $25, why would you waste time writing your own whole system? "Because you can" is only a valid answer if you are only going to make one device (and even then it probably isn't valid).