I hated Unity at first too. I even skipped 11.04 and 11.10 because I couldn't adjust. But when the LTS came out, I read how things have improved and decided to give it another chance. Now, I'm glad I did. Ubuntu 12.04 is my favorite release of Ubuntu. It works, it's fast, and I can get it configured the way I want in an hour or so. Sure, there's the occasional Compiz crash at first, but after updating and installing proprietary drivers, I haven't had any problems. I don't care if you use Debian, Arch, Mint, or whatever. As long as I can keep using what makes me happy, without making sacrifices to get things done, we can co-exist harmoniously, right?

Well, it's not the ideal solution to the privacy problem, but it's a (small) step in the right direction. I'm going to stick with 12.04 until the next LTS and see where Canonical will go from there. If it doesn't pan out, well, there's always good ol' Debian.

Well yeah, and there's the fact that most people couldn't care less about the politics. I can't speak for anyone's grandparents, but I've been using Ubuntu for years - by choice - because it works, it's fast, and I like the way it looks. Why people can't accept that, I'll never know. For one reason or another, in the Linux community, if you proclaim to like a popular distro, other people take it as a personal attack or something.

I don't know if mechanical HD's are considered "Amish technology" in the PC world yet, but I've been using computers since the 80s and have yet to have an HD disaster. Could be luck, could be karma, but I have no desire to switch yet. Even the typical sales pitch of "bigger, faster!" doesn't sell me like it does with GPUs.

Although this stuff is way over my head, I admire Sarah for all of her hard work in such a cut-throat industry. Being a woman, I can't imagine the extra pressure she has to put up with.

I really, really hope they find them, dead or alive. At least there would be some closure. Just going missing all this time is like a splinter that won't heal, you know?

Now this is just ridiculous. Why do they have to use such crappy plugins like Silverlight (which MS themselves are abandoning)? Why do they care how we browse their service and watch their videos, so long as we do so legally? Just make it HTML5 or some other open standard and let everyone watch without jumping through insane hoops or downloading obsolete (and potentially vulnerable) plugins.

Craig, even. D'oh!

I assume the next in line will be Crag Mundie.

Agreed. The advertising industry has become a cancer; from benign to malignant.

Another one moves to free software.

Are we surprised? No. You can't believe a word these people say.

There are still _some_ innovators left, but none of which match Jobs.

Since Jobs' death, they've been riding on the coattails of his work. Once his ideas run out, they'll be done-for. Unless Woz can pull magic out of his pocket and take over the reigns at Apple, that is.

I'm not sure if I believe this. I thought OpenGL has to pass through layers-upon-layers of APIs (just like sound) to do anything. All of that overhead can't possibly translate well to the average Joe. Plus, as we all know, Linux hardware compatibility is usually Plug 'n' Pray (i.e. plug it in, pray it works OOB).