...that's one way to get a Canon to work with Linux. Perhaps the only way, for most of Canon's printer models.

Though it may not be quite as easy to read initially, a prefix or postfix notated expression would work well on a (probably wrapped) line, and could therefore be good for simple text editors (which is what I use for taking notes). People experienced with this (LISPers?) would be better suited than I am to say if this would work well.

Parent is absolutely correct. The freedom to do what we wish with the software includes the freedom to sell. In parent's link, there is another link with further elaboration on the subject: Selling Free Software

The second paragraph really says it all: "Actually we encourage people who redistribute free software to charge as much as they wish or can. If this seems surprising to you, please read on." (Emphasis mine)

In short, the developer who thinks that selling GPLed software is against the spirit of the GPL is simply wrong.

It's been a few years since Ubuntu's default color scheme was the wash of dark brown you're describing as fecal. If your bodily wastes are anything like the orange colors that Ubuntu have used for most of their theme work for the past several releases (at least as of the last time I used it about a year ago), it might be a good idea for you to see a doctor.

I remember the controversies about the relative merits of the default brownness of the early editions of Ubuntu. The people who disliked it (apparently like parent poster) did so intensely and vocally; most people didn't really care, or were satisfied to change the color scheme if and when they felt like it without complaining about anything; and then another group of people actually liked seeing something other than blue for once. (Admittedly, I was among this last group.)

If I remember correctly, one of the reasons for using browns, reds, and yellows was that Ubuntu was conceived as an international distribution, designed to be pleasing to the eyes of people from cultures other than American, as not every culture has such strong preferences for blue (or other strong, vivid primary colors) as we do. I have no idea if they succeeded in this, but the rationale seemed compelling.

Adding to what Stewbacca posted, there are a couple things that seem to need pointing out. Just within the context of the Latin alphabet, the transition between having an all-caps system and the direct progression of advances that led to having a majescule/miniscule system like we have today took about five hundred years (the Uncials begat the Half-uncials begat the Carolingians). This span of five hundred years was one in which the nature of literacy changed, and though almost everyone who was literate was clergy, the clergy was really interested in getting the bible and other religious texts written as quickly and neatly as possible to aid in the dissemination of their ideas.

Additionally, the nature of writing changed: instead of needing an alphabet that could be flexible enough to work not only on stone, wax, or paper* (and here with brush or quill pen), almost everything was being done on paper with pens.

In any event, it's not that text in uppercase was too difficult to read before the advent of lowercase. Rather, it's that once we saw the benefits of the more varied letterforms (ascenders! decenders! clear visual distinction between sentences!) we found that all of a sudden it was easier to read long texts than before.

* by 'paper', I mean everything from pulp paper to papyrus to animal skin vellum or parchment and any other variation on this theme. We use sticky notes; ancient Romans used wax tablets.

There was no minuscule alphabet using Latin or Greek letterforms until the 8th or 9th Century. The Greco-Roman buildings to which you refer were written before there was really such a concept as all caps being different than any other kind of writing.

You and parent poster are onto something there, though. Lowercase forms (at lease using Latin letters, but likely also Greek) were conceived to make handwriting faster, consistent, and more legible than the quasi-cursive quasi-lowercase letterforms that immediately preceded them. Before the minuscules, all letters essentially fit into their own little boxes -- a matter that in the 20th Century made them easier to punch into cards with a 7x5 template (or something similarly simple). Minuscules weren't really feasible until displays could handle significantly greater resolution; but, once that resolution became available, the benefits of legibility (and the opportunities of having two of every letter) gave us the flexibility of lowercase.

...a conversation about Vim and you're concerned about learning obscure keystroke combinations?

It needs some patches to compile on modern systems, since development stopped before gcc4 was being used. It's not hard to find patches, and checkinstall would turn it into a package. I suppose there's a possibility that there's a 3rd party package out there somewhere, but not being an Ubuntu user, I can't make any guarantees. There's also a possibility that gcc3 is still available in the Ubuntu repositories, in which case there would be no need for the patches.