I would just like to second the distaste for control panels and FTP servers. Especially control panels because they encourage people not to understand what they're actually doing and its implications.

That said even without active monitoring it's pretty easy to figure out when a customer machine has been compromised. When the abuse complaints start rolling in about SSH brute force attacks originating from said machine it doesn't take much to figure out that somebody's gotten in to a machine they shouldn't have. Even with all the stealth and cunning in the world it's pretty hard to hide the fact that you're making outbound SSH connections that are ending up in somebody else's auth.log.

I have looked forward with dread to the day I'm going to have to fall back to Debian proper because of some stunt pulled by Ubuntu. I've run Debian Stable on a number of servers, and like Stable, that said on the desktop I can't see Stable working to well on the desktop. How does Sid stack up to Gentoo in terms of breaking all the damn time and requiring maintenance, hacks, and demonic sacrifices to keep working day to day? Would Testing with an absurd amount of apt pinning be better?

Also is there some obvious replacement to the PPA system/plethora of third party repositories for running XYZ random application or Foo version 0.99-svn-rightnow-so_new_it_hurts?

Yes.

No.

Nope.

Just use Ubuntu Tweak and quit complaining. It's even easier than a dropdown box, you just drag the buttons around, and they change in real time. Before you complain that they're third party, think about the name for one second, the tool for tweaking Ubuntu is named Ubuntu Tweak, what more do you really want.

You're both some what correct. I'm running Lucid with the buttons on the right side. The order you want for the artwork to look correct is:

"menu:maximize,minimize,close"

Up the ante.

Change step one to:
1) Some particularly radical bastion of liberalism / progressivism (Berkeley, perhaps, or another community with similar values) passes a city ordinance declaring judicial decisions that infringe upon free speech are obscene.

Have them arrest the judges, let them testify: they'll either have to admit guilt, or do a 180 on their own ruling. I very much doubt they will do the former, and the latter should provide sound legal reason as to why the original ruling was incorrect.

What about any outbound TCP connection? Aren't all outbound connections by definition uninvited.

I'm pretty sure slashdot didn't send me a nice embossed letter say "Please send an HTTP GET request to our fine server at 216.34.181.45 on port 80". Maybe Taco should do that for Verison Customers, hell I'd probably frame something like that.

No, that's exactly what people are upset about, that any random account logged in to the physical machine can write to /usr/bin, the things that they can write are limited to the contents of signed packages, but that's still a whole lot more than the absolutely nothing they could write under F11. Also all the comments I've seen are about adding packages, but does this also allow removing packages?

Kinda. The shim itself, which references the kernel headers and is definitely a derivative work, is released under the gpl. The blob, who knows what's in the by it's nature, but my understanding is that it exposes functions that represent hardware capabilities, and little if anything to do with what the OS does with those functions. It's the same set of functions that's exposed by the driver to windows, so hardly OS specific. I'm not sure about the legal status of the combined blob shim, but from a practical stand point it only interacts with kernel functions that aren't exposed as GPL_ONLY. Which is why the binary driver doesn't support KMS, because all the KMS functions are exposed as GPL_ONLY.

Hopefully Nouveau will have working 3d soon, as it's gpl throughout, and already has KMS working.

No you still don't get it. Please tell us how you can infringe on this:

"2.1.2 Linux/FreeBSD/OpenSolaris Exception. Notwithstanding the foregoing terms of Section 2.1.1, SOFTWARE designed exclusively for use on the Linux or FreeBSD operating systems, or other operating systems derived from the source code to these operating systems, may be copied and redistributed, provided that the binary files thereof are not modified in any way (except for unzipping of compressed files)."[1]

That is the license in question. There is no infringement, they are acting with in the license. There is a reason that the drivers are broken in to binary blobs with a stable abi, the the open source shim the connects that stable abi to the current kernel api.

[1]: http://www.nvidia.com/object/nv_swlicense.html

The big problem of Gnome shell, is that it's not modular. The problem isn't just that the default configuration has one panel, it's that THE configuration has one panel. And it's not even a panel, the menu/top bar is a singular whole unit, the elements can't be moved, removed, or added to. If gnome-shell provided a different default configuration, that wouldn't be a problem, the problem is that gnome-shell is a singular unit, you get all of it or none of it. Also gnome-shell isn't a stand alone application, it's a module/library loaded by the mutter window manager, so if you use a window manager other than mutter, like say compiz, you're left out in the cold. Gnome-shell not playing nice with other window managers isn't a problem as long as gnome-panel is still developed, supported, and packaged, but how long is that going to be?

I don't believe that the headers are installed by default, but there are a bunch of packages that depend on it because they use DKMS, such as:
Asterisk
the BCM43xx driver
All the closed video drivers
Virtual box
the LIRC drivers
kqemu

So while not installed by default, I'd guess they're a pretty common thing to have installed.

Maybe the should have thought of that before deciding to be bigots? If I'm a bad person, people will think less of me, seems pretty straightforward to me.

Group A does everything in it's power to harass, belittle and diminish the civil rights of group B. And suddenly want to cry foul when some one calls them out in public for it. Arguing that being called out as being a bigoted asshole is harassment seems out of place, if calling them out is harassment how do they handle the cognitive dissonance that sins they're being called out for are far worse?

A topical counter point to this is the first episode of SG1, which kicked all kinds of ass, and in my opinion was better than the movie. And yes Fox does love to kill good sci-fi, bastards.