Your views are horrifically myopic. I know the view from the ivory tower of academia looks damned rosy, but the world is far more gray than you can perceive from those heights. It's a world of beauty and grace with amazing acts of heroism and selflessness, and it's an ugly place where people tear each other apart for trivial reasons.

I would highly encourage you to leave the US and see the world a little. Countries like South Korea that have conscription have lower crime rates and less violence despite the crowding. There is a reason for this. Everyone served time in the military. Not only does time in the military give you an opportunity to see the world a different way, it prepares you for how to deal with problems should they arise, stay calm under pressure, and understand the ramifications of any violent action whether it be interpersonal or large-scale.

The very idea that you have done more good for society as a programmer than you would have doing a 2-year stretch in the armed forces is so laughable I am not entirely sure that you meant it that way. The military isn't just a bunch of people that can walk in a straight line with snappy uniformity. It's another side of life that would honestly benefit almost everyone. The US would certainly be in a better place right now if every member of the Legislature, the Supreme Court, and every President could not hold office without having served in the active military. Instead we have a bleating mass of insipid lawyers, businessmen, and academics playing "commander" with actual soldier's lives.

Instead of posting your lofty ideals, I would rather you just fucking say "Thank you" to everyone around you that served because you refused to. I realize that will never happen though.

So, on behalf of myself and every other military veteran in the US, you and your ilk are quite welcome for the security and lifestyle you enjoy. We did it for you even if you don't even understand what that means or appreciate it.

Consider my hand raised then?

My webserver and email servers both run -stable on the powerpc port.

Priests are an excellent demonstration of what they are talking about.

I have been playing a priest since the game was released back in '04.

Vanilla:
-- My priest was a Night Elf on the PVP server Laughing Skull. It was my main and only character for almost all of Vanilla. --

Priests were the undisputed champions of healing. Tank heals, raid heals, party healing were all easy and accessible to a priest with moderate skill and half-decent gear. Druids were great for topping off tanks and keeping HoTs stacked, but mostly they were brought along for Battle Res and Innervating the priests. Paladins were healing monsters for the few that knew how to play it, but they were best confined to tanks and offtanks.

Burning Crusade:
-- I rerolled my priest to Human just over halfway through BC and re-levelled it up to take advantage of the 15% Spirit boost from the human racial. Fear Ward was globally available by now. --

The introduction of shamans and buffing of healing paladins to obscene levels stole the crown from priests as the definitive healing class. Druids had always been decent enough in their own right for basic purposes, but Burning Crusade gave them Lifebloom, and that is all they needed to stack with Rejuvenation to heal pretty much anyone. To balance this growing disparity of priests being relegated to raid-healing (meaning non-tanks) only, they were given Circle of Healing. Circle of Healing turned out to be a phenomenal spell. By stacking tons of spellpower and Spirit, a priest could effectively spam CoH across a raid and dominate the meters and keep everyone alive. Tank healing was left to Druids and Pallies. Shamans did both tank and raid healing pretty darn well. By the advent of widescale Tier-5 and Tier-6, priests were second-rate healers. We were brought along for CoH spam, and skill was no longer required. A good priest still used the arsenal of heals available to them, but let's be honest here... You really could just smash CoH to get through SSC and TK if you wanted to. Zul'Aman was probably the only raid instance that still required priests to do more than spam

Wrath Of The Lich King:
-- My priest was levelled to 80, did a few raids, then I took a few months away from the game. I came back to it after 3 months or so and still play it. --

Wrath introduced not only the scourge of the entire game, Death Knights, it also gave all of the priest toys away to other classes while giving none of theirs back to us. Druids got a Circle of Healing-type spell that expanded on their already ridiculous HoTs. Pallies were rocking the healing with Beacon of Light and glyphs that provide a basic group heal component to Holy Light. Shamans have had the resto tree buffed pretty much non-stop since Wrath release. Priests got... well... nothing. Guardian Spirit is really neat, but a 51 point talent that has no direct healing effect other than an "Oh shit" button that lasts for 10 seconds every three minutes? No. This does not compare at all. Still, priests were effective healers for parties and raids. Circle of Healing now had a cooldown, but Prayer of Healing was putting out great numbers if you stacked regen to support it.

Then came the mana regeneration nerf. Priests relied on stacked Spirit for killer mana regeneration and even to boost healing output. Druids did to, but they had innervate to help offset the nerf. Pallies regenerate mana through their own tools and through crits. Shammies never used Spirit for much of anything anyways. Mail gear is heavy in mana per 5, and they have very effective water shields for boosting mana pools. Suddenly... my priest had less than half of the regeneration it had back at level 70. Yet my spell costs are double in some cases. Spirit became a joke. Mana issues plagued priests until the other casters helped us out with replenishment. Prayer of Healing became our staple raid healing spell. It could be alternated in a loose cycle with Circle of Healing while Prayer of Mending made the rounds. We were suddenly the bottom of the rung in healing. Meters aren't everything, but they sure are clear in this regard. Our numbers were bad.

Then came the Prayer of Healing nerf and the replenishment nerf with the last patch. I won't even elucidate on how unnecessary or damaging this was.

A priest can still rock the charts and be a valuable raid healer... but we have to work twice has hard as the other healing classes for it. My guild takes a priest on every raid for Fortitude and Divine Spirit. Our main healing team, which I used to lead, is now stocked with paladins and druids instead. I still put up some pretty decent numbers, but a druid or paladin with crap gear can field the same or better if they have even half a clue.

Blizzard has no idea what they are doing anymore with class balance. The recent priest Q&A was a case study in self-contradiction and half-truths.

In the meantime, my paladin is coming along nicely.

Not all of us are loons. I know this will come as a shock, but some of us are not Republicans, we don't watch Bill O'Reilly, and we were just as embarrassed about Bush Jr. as everyone else.

Besides, everything in your comment could be said about any state. Look in the news on any given day and see the lunacy, crime, and ridiculous things going on all over the country.

Or do you just want a punching bag and Texas is your current choice?

Sweeping generalizations and ignorant commentary only make you look just as bad as those you would condemn.

This also is the way I read it.

To paraphrase what ari_j said: The burden of professional response lies on the shoulders of those least qualified to respond professionally, because that is how the system is rigged and we should all go along with this or lose everything we have worked for to immoral lawyers.

Sorry, ari_j, I don't accept that, and it is just not right. Our legal system has gotten out of control and unfortunately, since it is controlled by the lawyers and judges who are part of the problem, this is not likely to ever change. We have a system that allows for the indiscriminate fleecing of regular citizens to the tune of millions for patent shell companies and industry representatives. You or I have little chance of fending off one of these attacks, and even if we succeed in court, we still fail when the bills have to be paid for the defense. It is beyond the scope of the average person to afford to fight.

So your solution to contending with the inherent issues within Open Source software is to be a thief?

Got it.

Tom Baker without a doubt.

Ecceleston was a good doctor if only because he had a similar sense of humor though. I really just don't care for Tennant at all. I'll be glad to get this new guy even if he does look a bit foppish.

I suspect there is something going on behind the scenes that keeps them from targeting the Mac. Perhaps a joint venture with Safari in the future, or something new that is a hybrid. Mac is a stable development platform, so there has to be something business-related going on.

Speaking of development platforms:
Which linux distribution should they target? Which packaging system should they use? Which compiler version should they compile against? Should they make it QT-based or GTK-based? Will GNOME crap on it for breaking their precious HIG? What about in 6 months when all of those things needlessly change and break?

No matter how you answer those questions, someone else in the linux community will tell you that you are WRONG. This more than any other reason is why I don't see it ever being ported by Google. Who would want to have to deal with the hassle of perpetual fragmentation and breakage?

Perhaps they are secretly laughing at us right now since the code is out there and no one is doing anything with it. Tin foil hats abound!

I love how "liberals" are to blame for pretty much everything now, including gag items in online stores like this one.

I don't know if you are an actual conservative or just a Limbaugh-mouthpiece, but there is so much more to the world than red vs blue, conservative vs liberal, etc. You should really try unplugging from everything for a while and maybe going outside for a bit.

Politicians and the media in general have been getting away with false dichotomies for far too long. People need to get some perspective.

I'd suggest riding a bike or just going for a long drive with the windows down and the stereo off. After an hour, you won't even miss the music/radio/phone/pager.

Go ahead! We'll still be here when you get back.

Thanks for the permission to post.

Did you read the rest of the post where I laid out that the NIC, the printer, and multiple monitors failed to work? Using the nv driver by default yields crap results. Yes, I know you can change the driver out, but even having done so, how can I easily get my ancillary monitors to extend my desktop nicely? Windows does it in a few mouse clicks and works very well. I am, of course, completely capable of editing the xorg.conf file myself, because I know how to do such things.. but that isn't really the point is it? The point is that these are things that don't work properly. So, yes, I consider that the inability for either Ubuntu or Debian to easily understand my graphics cards and monitor setup to be a failure in usability.

Don't get me wrong, please. I use Debian at the house for quite a bit, as well as my beloved FreeBSD box, but I recognize the shortcomings in them. To make a blanket statement about the amazing "just works" of desktop linux is just laughable. My Wacom Intuos begs to differ.

Now, to address your anecdotes:
XP was released Aug 24 2001
Vista was released Jan 30 2007

Which you are comparing to:
Fedora Core 11 which has not been released yet according to both:
http://fedoraproject.org/
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=fedora

So, I am not sure what you are looking for here. It seems rather silly to debate stability and feature sets of operating systems that are at a minumum over 2 years apart, and the benchmark is a distribution that has yet to release.

I did. My friends do.

Building your own rig is generally cheaper (Hooray for NewEgg) and you get precisely what you want, which makes it much more attractive than the boxed options at Dell, HP, etc.

You posit that Linux has better driver support than Windows? I am sorry... but this is just laughable. Seriously. What flavor is the Kool-Aid you are drowning in?

I can only assume you refuse to accept any Windows OS since XP since your assertion is so ludicrous I had to read it three times to make sure I wasn't seeing things.

Those kinds of blanket bullshit claims may work on non-technical users, but this is Slashdot and we damn well know better. Are you just foaming for karma, or are you really that deluded?

Ubuntu and Debian are both epic failures on both of my desktop systems out of the box. No ethernet. Refusal to understand multiple displays (which Vista handled perfectly with 3 clicks of a mouse). Printer woes. OH, and let's not forget that it had no freaking clue what to do with my GTS-260.

Please don't make absolutely ridiculous claims where the preponderance of evidence is against you.

I have no idea what you are doing to those poor machines, but the two desktops that get the most family use in my house hardly ever get rebooted. Both are running Vista, one is 32-bit Vista on an old 3.0GHz Hyperthread from 2006, and my personal desktop is 64-bit Vista on an i7 Nehalem. Even with the monthly patch, you have the option not to reboot unless you want to. It's really only once a quarter or so that the update mandates an actual reboot, and that is the only time our machines get rebooted. 4 reboots or so a year is pretty reasonable I think and I have never had a problem with either of these machines slowing down or getting flaky.

I certainly reboot that many times a year on my linux box just from getting a new kernel in my update.

Are you installing warez or downloading questionable torrents or something?

I am so tired of the "license to use a car" argument that never seems to lose traction around here. Cars are just not computers, even if they do have some similarities.

I'll provide a handy reference guide since no one seems to get this:

CARS:
Use gasoline
Transport you physically from place to place
Can be loud if you have one of those annoying exhaust pipes
Does NOT run a spreadsheet
Can be used to get hot women
If you take the top off, you get a breezy fun ride
Can kill people if driven badly
Can get you a ticket if you drive through a red light
Works with my iPod
Serves as a makeshift bed for spontaneous sexual activity
Can be used to see women engaged in lude acts

COMPUTERS:
Use electricity
You don't really move out of your chair
Can be loud if you have one of those annoying huge fans
DOES run a spreadsheet
Can NEVER be used to get hot women
If you take the top off you just look like a nerd
Doesn't kill people if used badly
Can get you a fine if you download movies
Works with my iPod
Would result in bodily harm if used for spontaneous sexual activity
Can be used to see women engaged in lude acts

HINT: Cars require licensing because failure to operate one safely potentially results in the deaths of many people. Computers can only potentially result in yourself being harmed in a non-corporeal way.

I hope this helps.

Because anyone that uses a real desktop to do actual work doesn't give two shits about windows that materialize in from another dimension or menus that fade out like a Dukes of Hazzard scene change?

I mean... Seriously?

A desktop environment should specialize only in getting the hell out a users way so they can actually be productive. I find it continually amazing how much time and energy is spent on making 'teh shiny.'