But more seriously, am I the only one sick and f r e a k i n g tired of erstwhile do-gooders running around trying to enforce their superior judgements on everybody else? Even if I may agree with some of their good ideas, I don't want them to be coercively enforced on everyone unless there is a legitimate criminal, or real public safety aspect to them (and by real public safety I mean leading to imminent danger, not "may contribute to poor eating habits in some people"). Sheesh! This kind of crap makes my blood boil.

Ummmm...earthquakes?

...or Vermont Maple syrup, but honestly, I don't think the Maple Trees much care, disloyal bastards.

MASM

I can't help agreeing. I got to really liked GNOME 2. Bummer it had to be reinvented. I switched from Unity to GNOME 3 this update, just as I had switched from Unity back to GNOME 2 just after last one. It has nothing to do with being "too cool" for Unity. I tried to get used to Unity, but "clunky" doesn't even adequately describe it. I guess I'll try XFCE again. I tried it a long time ago, and it was a little to minimal at the time. I hear it's grown up.

Allow me to add my critique: Astute and well put, elrous0. The issues are actually two fold assuming agreement on the nature and scope of GW. The firsts involves consequence; and, whether GW provides positive effects, net and/or varied by geography, negative effects, same condition boundaries, and who would be affected negatively, positively, and by how much. The second involves actionability, that is, where GW incurs negative effects, whether there are actions humans can implement to avoid or mitigate those effects, and the cost versus benefits of those actions, or even inactions. The off-putting factor to me is that vague theory, as well as solution sets, always seem to revolve around the politics of the camps involved.

Two finger tap functions like right click on Mac. No problem. Otherwise, agree Unity was just awful. I say was, because it's so easy to change to Gnome 3 and make default (Synaptic, find GNOME 3, click, apply, reboot). That said, GNOME 3 is an unnecessary departure from what was otherwise a perfectly good desktop. But, getting wing used to it. Far better than Unity. Life goes on.

I was one of those people who were kind of annoyed, both when GNOME 3 messed with the legacy GNOME interface, and super annoyed with Ubuntu for Unity, which is a travesty. That said, and to Ubuntu's credit, changing to GNOME 3 at least was as easy as a click from Synaptic. GNOME 3 is beginning to grow on me. Oh well. The only constant in this world is change. Isn't it wonderful to at least have a choice?

If the EU believe the benefits justify the lifecycle costs, then they should go for it, and good for them. Of course, if their choice of incompatible standards introduced into a mature market reduces demand to below profitability thresholds, then too bad, so sad. Good luck friends.

BINGO! Policies that carry significant political political weight, especially when they become fashionable routes to swift approval, are especially prone to misunderstanding, misapplication, and imbalance between indented and unintended consequences. COTS, when misused as a panacea to achieve affordability, tends to not only be less affordable in the long run, but often leads to less effective solutions. The problem is that panaceas rarely are. Policies mindlessly pursued lead to poor results decoupled from original kernel of intent. There are certainly valid places for COTS, and valid reasons for nots.