Conventional wisdom holds that at least the following five problems block the adoption of Free operating environments such as GNU/Linux on home computers. What steps have GNU/Linux advocates begun to take in order to fix these?

1. The only consistency among graphical applications for GNU/Linux is that they consistently ignore the GUIdelines of their desktop environment.
2. Best Buy carries no peripherals with a penguin on the front of the box. A penguin would indicate that the IHV has chosen to include working Linux drivers on the disc bundled with the hardware. "Print out your distribution's hardware compatibility list and carry it into the store" does not easily apply to gifts from relatives.
3. Best Buy carries virtually no recent release proprietary 3D games designed for GNU/Linux, other than those few M-rated first-person shooters that include a Linux client binary on the CD alongside the Windows binary. Parents may find M-rated games unacceptable, or players may prefer MMORPGs or tactical simulations.
4. Best Buy carries no recent release proprietary educational games designed for GNU/Linux. People buy computers to run Reader Rabbit.
5. GNU/Linux lacks a DVD Video player application licensed by DVD Forum and DVD CCA.

Rather than send me what they were supposed to send me, BZBOYZ.com has cancelled my order. Their email says that orders are cancelled only when you cancel it or when they try to contact you and fail, but since I got an email about it, obviously they can mail me. You can read more about it on my livejournal - I won't bother to mirror this part, since slashdot no longer allows the PRE tag and I used it to quote their email. Suffice to say that you should not ever trust BZBOYZ.com. Do not order from them! They will try to bone you! You will not like it!

I recently ordered a motherboard/CPU combo through pricewatch (as in, I found it through pricewatch) from BZBOYZ.com. Their ad said retail product, shipped in 1-2 days; they called me later that night and tried to sell me up to the retail product, saying I had purchased the OEM product, and only after I sent a complaint to pricewatch did anyone respond to my email requests to get the product at the right price, saying it would take them 4-5 days to ship. I wrote about it in my livejournal. Here is a mirror.

--- intro above, mirror below ---

I went looking for a motherboard and CPU combo on pricewatch, since you generally save on shipping this way - And pricewatch because I've always used them, and had good results, even from places probably being run out of a garage. The streak of good luck ended with BZBOYZ.com. This was the ad copy on pricewatch when I called on the morning of the 18th:

Asus ONLINE ORDER ONLY - A7N8X-DX (DELUXE) 266FSB AGP 8X Dual LAN Video DDR400 Audio USB 2.0 IEEE 1394 A7N8XDX. retail Details: with cpu - ATHLON XP 2600+,2.13GHZ 333MHz With Heatsink & Fan Complete Combo Kit Barton Core. Part - BZBP#A7N8X-DX- 2600+

Price + Shipping $215.00 Price $ 211 Shipping: $0.01 - 4.00 Will Ship: 1-2 days

BZBOYZ.com 877-429-2699 562-252-1527 Signal Hill, CA info ... w/Pricewatch since 1998. APO/AE/Govt/EDU POs/Will Call welcome. Most orders shipped within 24-48Hrs. Fast shipping and service. We customize systems & servers. HUGE selection to Chose from. Consider us for your present and future needs. Languages Spoken - English, Spanish

So, they're basically attaching themselves to Pricewatch's good name. They said 1-2 days to ship. They said retail. On the evening of the 18th I get a call from a woman who I could barely hear and whose accent I could barely decipher could I have heard her, while a great deal of noise was being made in the background - it sounded, actually, a bit like a nursery. She said that I would have to pay another fifteen bucks or so in order to get the retail version. Now, I actually got to their site from the buy now link on pricewatch, so I know I was ordering what they intended me to order, and it says retail for $211 right there.

So I ended up hanging up with her and calling back and talking to a man, this time on a better phone and in a quieter environment, with a similar accent. (I'm not good placing people, at all.) He also tried to sell me up to what I was already ordering.

I emailed them this message:

I enclose the PDF from pricewatch showing your advertisement of A7N8X-DX retail for $211.

Please adjust my order for the retail product at this price accordingly.

They failed to respond. So I sent this message through pricewatch:

BZBOYZ listed an Asus A7N8X-DX retail for a specific price and is now trying to charge me extra for the retail version, saying they are planning to send me the OEM version instead. I placed my order yesterday morning, and they called me that evening trying to sell up to me. At this time they have not shipped my order, or at least, have not sent me ship notification, and have not responded to my email in which I sent them a PDF with the pricewatch listing.

Their response was:

Dear Mr. Espinoza,

It usually takes us 4-5 working days to ship an order. Though your order is being rapidly processed, it's in our accounting department now for accounts verification.

If everything goes smoothly we will be able to ship your order very soon.

Thank you very much for shopping with us.

Regards,
Xxxxxx Xxxxx.

So; They are not responsive unless you file a complaint through pricewatch. Once complained to, they say they will take 4-5 days to ship. The pricewatch listing says shipping in 1-2 days, and they said retail, but tried to sell me OEM. Has this happened to anyone else? Meanwhile they have already charged my credit card, so I can't simply go shop with someone else. "Please exercise patience"? Please avoid fraudulent advertising.

Looking over the front page of /. right now I see a lame and a stupidly vague brief. Courtesy Hemos: tulip blubs sell well. Blub! The brief is on "Search for the Missing Universe" and it gives a setup but does not give the short form of what the hell they're talking about, it's a teaser, not a brief.

Slashdot continues to slide downhill...

Maybe the little link at the top of the front page saying that subscribers get to see the new stories before other people would be more motivational if there were less dupes and less of the actually important news pieces were rejected in favor of fluff pieces. Just a thought, /..

Intel is obviously trying to kill off overclocking because of the power users who do it. It's not to defeat remarking because many processors (including my Athlon XP) DO tell you the speed at which they are meant to operate. The OS loads this, Windows XP certainly does. If I bring up properties on my computer I am informed that I have an AMD Athlon(TM) XP 1700+ and it is running at 1.66 GHz. Now, you do have to know what you're looking for in the case of an Athlon XP because they are giving you PR and not GHz in the name of the CPU, but nonetheless each speed had a unique cpu id.

Slashdot requires you to wait 2 minutes between each successful posting of a comment to allow everyone a fair chance at posting a comment.

It's been -490 seconds since you last successfully posted a comment

Chances are, you're behind a firewall or proxy, or clicked the Back button to accidentally reuse a form. Please try again. If the problem persists, and all other options have been tried, contact the site administrator.

Maybe this is just because I'm spending so much time on e2 these days, but I absolutely despise /.'s mod system. I haven't set myself to not be a moderator, though, and I metamod every day.

Incidentally, people who use the "Redundant" moderation are fucknuts.

Anyway it's really stupid that I can't moderate comments in a discussion that I have posted in. It would make sense to not be able to moderate comments to which I have replied (or when I've replied to one of their children or parents other than the article itself) but I want to mod up some insightful comments unrelated to what I had to say, and now I can't.

The current mod system stifles the exchange of information because I cannot participate in a discussion which I have moderated in any way other than moderation without blowing away my mods, and I cannot moderate (up or down) in any discussion I have participated in. It doesn't make any sense. We have metamoderation for a reason, this is overkill.

END OF RANT.

Why should I use this journal when I have a LiveJournal?