I'm going to echo what others are saying and say that I think your examples are bad. I wouldn't necessarily expect a developer to understand public key encryption unless they had a background of working with public key encryption. You don't necessarily need to understand that sort of thing to make web applications or iOS apps, so it really depends on the kind of development you're doing.

Regarding file encryption, I find the question to be reasonable. If you want to send an encrypted Excel file to someone, it's probably smarter to just use the built-in password protection and encryption. If you can trust that someone has Excel enough to send them an Excel file, then you can assume they have Excel enough to open a password protected file. I would not, however, trust that someone has GPG installed.

Getting back to your question, I generally estimate that roughly 80% of people are bad at their jobs, whatever they do. This is based on a couple decades of anecdotal evidence in the professional world, but it's borne out with the new experience I continue to have, and other people seem to share the experience.

I'm not saying that I don't understand the filesystem. I'm used to it, and I often forget how random and silly it is. My point is that if you try to look at it with fresh eyes, it is a bit silly.

And people tend to do what you've just done, which is to make up an order and arrangement that almost makes sense. But the truth is, the whole thing evolved over time, and almost none of those things were the original intention. As someone pointed out, /usr started out as the place for user home/profile directories, but people kept putting things in there that didn't belong, which lead to the creation of /home and the abandonment of /usr to "another place we put binaries, for some reason."

AFAIK, /var started out as a place for specifically variable-sized files. The idea was that if you had a set of files which might grow very quickly, you might want those on their own drive or partition so they wouldn't overrun the rest of the system. Now, when you get down to it, it's because sort of like the /home directory that doesn't belong to any particular user. Sort of like Windows "ProgramData" folder. And /etc was named that because it was a bit of a catch-all for anything else, but really now it's pretty much a dedicated "system configuration file" location.

But those are just the names, and my point wasn't just "Oh, I don't particularly care for the names". My point was, this is a structure that's grown organically over decades, and it is not really "clean". Do we really need /lib, /var/lib, and /usr/lib? Do we really need /bin, /sbin, /usr/bin, /usr/local/bin, and /usr/sbin? My impression is that some of this repetition was created as a bit of a kludgey way to solve some particular problem, and then left in place for compatibility/legacy reasons, and maybe just "we're not sure whether this will break anything, so let's leave it alone." And then, after sitting around that way for a decade, everyone was so used to it that it just seems like "the way it's supposed to be."

And fine, whatever. It works. People are used to it. Why change for the sake of change? But don't pretend like it was an elegant planned organization.

Exactly. So there are never non-binary scripts in /bin, right? And if I install a vanilla Linux install without any additional installations, than /usr will be completely empty because it's only for user-installed programs. Well, and their "supporting stuff", which can be damned near anything.

And then some things go into "opt", because fuck you that's why.

Honestly, you're not even arguing with me. People don't need to know what /etc is, and if you know enough to mess around in /etc, then you'll probably know enough to know what's in there. But again, that says nothing about whether the name of it makes sense. Your argument boils down to "It's what we're used to, and we know what it is, so it's fine." And I say again, that's a fine argument. Just drop the nonsense in claiming that it's clean, logical, and well thought out.

And I'm just talking about one simple little factor of the design-- directory naming structure. There's lots of messiness and nonsense. We just usually ignore it and forget about it in favor of maintaining conventions and compatibility.

Right, so what you're saying is, I'm already used to it, so it's fine. That was kind of my point. It's not a sensible layout, but you're used to it.

And don't give me this crap about "just because someone 'doesnt like how it looks'." It's not about how it looks. It's about sensible design. When you're designing something like this, you should basically make some attempt to put things where an knowledgeable person would expect them to be. In the case of directory structures, this translates into something like, "Show the list of directories to someone who doesn't know the directory tree, and have them guess where things go." What goes into "dev" vs. "etc" vs. "bin" vs. "sbin"?

And sure, you can say that it doesn't really matter what things are called and how things are organized, since people can always learn the weird, confusing, obscure directory structure. And that's a fine argument. But then don't give me this nonsense about the setup being, "clean, logical, well put-together, and organized." It's basically a bunch of kludge to maintain compatibility.

You would only say that because you were used to the previous organization. It has always been a mess of "catering to old UNIX paradigms" while also "trying to squeeze in the latest new thing." Old UNIX guys have always complained whenever the GNU tools had a different behavior from what they were used to, including changes that you take for granted. Bash was once new, and some people still don't like it.

Do you remember the first time you saw a UNIX filesystem? Think back. You have directories like etc, usr, and var. "usr" doesn't really contain user information. "etc" doesn't include miscellaneous files. "var"? WTF is "var"?

None of that shit ever made sense. It's what you were used to. If we set out today to make a sensible, orderly, logical, clean system, it would not look like modern Linux, and it would not look like old Linux.

That's why, IMO, Microsoft should go the Google route. They should make Windows free (maybe even Libre), and try to make their money from server software and services. Charge for Office 365, including MS Office, Storage for OneDrive, InTune, Exchange, etc. Create a consumer-focused version of InTune/Office 365-- sort of like iCloud. Continue charging for Windows Server, Exchange, and Sharepoint for business use. Use Windows for desktops/laptops/tablets/mobile as a loss-leader platform that enables them to deliver those services.

It's a bit risky, but I think it's they'll be forced into it within a few more years anyway, and they'd be smart to go that direction before they're dragged in that direction.

Well I think they actually would be very smart to have a rolling release, or somehow encouraging everyone to go up to Windows 10 ASAP. Yes, some of the reason for that would be so that they can give users the features they want, and promote services they'd like to support. The bigger issue is support. I think one of the smartest things that Apple has done in recent years is to make OSX upgrades free. It means that unless you have legacy hardware that's unsupported, there's no reason not to move to the most recent version. That means you don't have to spend as much time and money supporting those old versions. If everyone running Windows XP could have upgraded to Windows 7 at no cost (and without a significant slowdown on the system), then you would have heard a lot less bitching and moaning when Microsoft discontinued support for a 12 year-old operating system.

The problem is, if Microsoft wants to achieve this rolling release by way of subscriptions, they're going to make a lot of people pretty angry. So personally, I think free is a smarter move.

Also-- and I've made this argument many times before-- the OS shouldn't be something that expires. The "subscription" that you're talking about, IIRC, was "Software Assurance" which includes support and free upgrades, but Windows XP wouldn't suddenly stop working if you chose not to renew your subscription.

The rumor regarding this is that Microsoft has been planning a subscription version of Windows where, if you stop paying, your computer stops working. To my mind, that's unacceptable. Next thing you know, HP is going to start shipping subscription printer drivers that stop working if you don't pay their $5/month ransom, or your Smart TV will require a $5 subscription to keep the OS working. If you buy a hardware product, and the hardware vendor includes software because, in their opinion, without that software, your hardware will be useless, then that software should not expire.

Yeah, that's very much in line with what I'm pointing out.

I don't have a problem with a private contractor being used to actually build and maintain the road. I would be very uneasy allowing the private company to then "own" vital sections of road and charging whatever tolls they like. It would be so much worse if they could block some vehicles, charge different tolls for different vehicles, and set different speed limits for different vehicles, without even needing to provide a reason or rationale.

So imagine that I own a company called "Road America Inc." and we own the roads going in and out of your town. Imagine I'm allowed to say, "Tolls for Ford cars are $1, and Ford cars can go 70 MPH. Tolls for Dodge are $20, and Dodge cars have a speed limit of 35 MPH." You see, I'm not owned by Ford, but I've made a deal with Ford where I get a payoff to promote their brand.

I do, however, own some of the grocery stores in your town, and I'm charging very high tolls on any vehicles that carry groceries. Somehow, all of my grocery stores have cheaper goods. Maybe it's because I use the tolls on groceries to fund those grocery stores. I've outright blocked any incoming shipments of electronics, so my electronics stores are doing very well.

Now does that seem fair?

No, the current mess is mostly due to the fact that we've been treating the Internet like a private entertainment service rather than public telecommunication infrastructure. You're never going to get real "free market" competition out of infrastructure. By its nature, public infrastructure needs to be treated as... well, public infrastructure.

I don't think that's a concern for this discussion. They're not making it any easier or more allowed for ISPs to mess with illegal content. The ISPs are already allowed to block illegal content, and will always be allowed to do that. The news here is that they aren't allowed to block or throttle anything else.

So yes, I would be concerned if they were talking about increasing the ability of ISPs to monitor and restrict questionable content, or if they were talking about expanding the definition of "unlawful content" to include other things. However, that doesn't seem to be relevant here. They're basically saying, "You're not allowed to throttle or block anything anymore. The only exception is if it's child pornography or something equally illegal, in which case, yes, we'll still let you block that."

Why would people bother to pirate music anymore? You can use Spotify for free, and get it ad-free and even with downloads allowed for a few dollars a month. There's no point.

Some might argue that this is a serious problem-- that the music industry is in a shambles and it's not clear this is all sustainable. Others might argue that this is evidence of where the problem was all along-- that piracy is the result of high prices and poor service, and when people are provided a cheap and convenient product, they're often willing to pay for it in some way. Either way, I don't see much of a reason to pirate music anymore unless it's somehow unavailable through legal channels.

... like the other applications on that platform. It's really not a hard concept. Go look at other professional applications that were built specifically for each platform. Your product should look like *that* on each particular platform.

Ideally, on Gnome, it should look like it was written to run on Gnome. On KDE, like it was designed for KDE. On OSX, like it was made by Apple to run on OSX, and yes, on Windows, it should ideally feel like it was made by Microsoft for that particular version of Windows. Obviously that's an ideal that won't be met perfectly on all platforms. There will be compromises. But I don't think the concept is hard to understand.

My perception is that Google is fairly open, more so than the others, not locking down the Nexus devices. But on the other hand, their Android partners are really locking things down, and the most generous view of Google is that they're simply powerless to stop it. Often enough, it seems like there are people within Google who favor openness, but the company as a whole is happy to let users' freedoms be restricted so long as it pushes them farther into the Google ecosystem.

That's my perception, not that Microsoft or Apple, or even Blackberry are any better. Google is the most freedom-loving of the bunch, but still not exactly the rebel freedom-fighting bunch that their fans would sometimes like to paint them as.

That's my perception, anyway, as an outsider who follows things relatively well.