> Systemd is deployed in real systems and these aren't crashing or suffering chronic problems.

Some people seem to be reporting this very thing. The cult of mindless progress just seems intent on ignoring everyone that isn't drinking the Kool-Aid.

> However, do these programs follow the do-one-thing-and-do-it-well principle: web servers like Apache, database servers like PostgreSQL,

Yes they do actually.

One serves web pages and the other enforces the relational model on data. They aren't one huge behemoth that includes both of these as well as some other application level features.

Are you kidding. Linux doesn't even need to be installed. You can just run it straight from the install media.

This is handy when you have a Windows install that can't even run it's own wired network interface and it can't tell you what driver it needs because it's too dumb to do that.

Linux liveCD to the rescue!

Boot up.
Interrogate hardware.
Proceed with beating the bushes to find Windows drivers.

Linux works out of the box in the same way that MacOS or Windows does.

If your average Windows user had to install their own OS they would be even more lost than if they tried dealing with Linux.

That list glosses over a couple of major problems.

1) You avoid the current version because it's such a usability disaster that no one wants to touch it. It's so bad that people would rather run an ancient and completely unsupported version.

2) Your current hardware is suddenly obsolete because it's last years model and it's not supported anymore.

Modular design makes "rage-forks" a lot less of a problem than some people try to make them out to be.

Wages have been stagnant for awhile now. They might be an improvement on a Wal-Mart greeter but they seem to have not improved much in some places in the last 10 or so years.

Inflation is slowly eroding the apparent advantage.

Plus SFO and NYC are crazy expensive places to live. You just need more there.

> The new iMac and the Macbook pro both ship with retina.

In other words: screw all of the legacy users where legacy means last years model.

This is the problem with Apple's idea of "forward thinking". They don't just offer a new new features, they prevent you from using the old ones.

If real life hasn't caught up to the future quite yet, that puts you in a bind.

> I'm sure some elder statesman of the Unix world would ask "Why would you ever want a GUI on a UNIX system? "

This would be the "green screen" myth that certain trolls like to fixate on so much.

The truth is that GUIs were commonplace on Unix workstations long before they were widely adopted on DOS kludge clones. However, this fact does not mean that this feature has to be force fed to everyone all the time.

The key feature of a Unix GUI is that it is HIGHLY OPTIONAL. It also does not sabotage anything else. It doesn't require abandoning the Unix design philosophy. A GUI is not fundementally incompatible with the rest of Unix.

If you want an all-singing-all-dancing-crap-of-the-world style logfile, leave the originals alone and create a new set of tools that build on top of what's already there and leave what's there alone.

There's no need to sabotage other people's stuff.

I'm glad that there is a virtual lynch mob around willing to shout down bad ideas. Some things are just bad ideas. They are very well understood as to why they are bad ideas. Yet people proceed (and kid themselves) despite of a lot of sound reasoning and appeals to first principles.

Past a certain point you have to turn the volume up to 11 just to get dissent to register to some people.

Never mind Tesla. I don't even want to deal with dealers for conventional cars. I would rather order the thing online direct from the factory (or Amazon) and just have it delivered. There is so much crap an nonsense you have to deal with at a car dealership, it's not even funny.

This "upselling" thing is a sickness that seems to have infested everything.

Nah. The real question is what took them so long? They should have been first in line to suck up to Detroit.

I was once in a position to observe a larger and more significant population of mice. While a population of 10 wasn't large enough to observe the appearance of a "prodigy", a population of roughly 100 was.

Yes. Not automatically running untrusted code is MUCH MORE secure than just sticking your fingers in your ears and assuming the problem will be handled.

Modern webpages are a rats nest of external scripts coming from who knows where. Browsers should not be enablers of this.

Patents and trade secrets are the same thing.

Patents are supposed to be useful trade secrets that have been disclosed for consideration. The patent monopoly is that consideration. The point being that it's more productive to make that trade secret public knowledge.

Patents aren't meant to be an anti-competitive bludgeon or a virtual land grab.

Their original intent is more like an adhoc sort of peer reviewed technical journal except those things probably didn't exist when modern patents systems were first created.

That said, patents are pretty much worthless for disclosure purposes. They are designed for litigation, not useful disclosure. The treble damages rule also discourages everyone from actually trying to use patents as the storehouse of knowledge they're supposed to be.

> So software patents should be abolished because some patents were incorrectly granted...

Not "some", the vast majority. The error rate for software patents is more like 99%.

> Should prisons be abolished because some prisoners were incorrectly sentenced?

If this were happening 99% of the time, then sure?

Software patents are so bad that it would be simpler just to abolish them. Although the real problem is the assumption from the Ayn Rand types that avarice is the mother of invention.