worst ask slashdot ever

You're just angry that I'm pointing out that linux lacks a central repository for application and kernel settings and you have to dig through /etc 's mass of files to do the same thing. Linux is still rocking the equivalent of ".ini" files, and yeah -- it is primitive.

I hope this is the greatest troll comment ever, because this is the last thing Linux needs. /etc is so mind numbingly simple and can be traversed with vim, grep and find so easily that turning it in to a shit fest of a binary repository, e.g. window's registry or even gconf's xml would be horrific

not having a repository like that is a feature as opposed to an over architected flaw

The guns were legally locked up and stored. The insane son killed his own mother and then stole her guns. Now gun law would have stopped that.

if guns were banned, there would have been no guns to steal and kill his mother with. so gun laws would have stopped it.

I want one, but srsly, the cost of that thing is retarded. $400 for the base option, which is essentially an extravagant usb3.0 hub and dvd rw with some bells on it.

http://www.icyblaze.com/idocument/

iDocument for the mac is like iTunes but for documents. It lets you import documents (pretty much any type) and tag them and store them in virtual or real folders, it sounds like it's exactly what you're after.

shoes cant believe in god silly, they have no soul

3 hours before I need to be at work and go to the gym, and try my damned hardest not to eat the free biscuits or cakes when I get in to the office.

You can have more than one standard, e.g SPDY and HTTP being incompatible yet doing the same thing hasn't destroyed the www as we know it.

A monopoly isn't something that's behavioural, it's when something is the only supplier of a particular commodity. In this case we are talking about the X display server standard.

There are no other display server standards in use on the Linux desktop (as far as I am aware), just different implementations of the same thing.

On what basis ? X was originally created by MIT in the early 80's since then there has a been litterally dozens of implementations ,every single Unix shipped it's own (usually proprietary since the MIT license allows proprietary forks) X implementation. Even in the Linux world there are TWO X versions - XFree86 was the one of choice for distro's for a decade and a half, before a fork - x.org largely motivated by a change in the XFree86 license became the new preferred one in around 2005.

I'd call no (at least thet I'm aware of) successful competing standards (on the Linux desktop) a monopoly ;) Regardless of the number of successful implementations of that standard!

Compete ? Sure, but cooperate is better. Every other "competing" item on your list cooperates with the others, gnome and KDE has agreed on a standard for dozens of things, hence we have dbus, the .desktop file standard etc. etc. etc. The word that used to be popular to describe how we do things was coopetition - we cooperated AND compete, because we aren't trying to win, we're just trying to inspire each other to do better.

Whilst my memory is hazy, the creation of freedesktop.org and LSB was down to lack of cooperation due to competition back in the early days. I might be wrong but I vaguely remember there being issues copy and pasting between KDE and GNOME way back when .. Mir might go the way of Fresco, bring something new to light or just turn in to another implementation of X, who knows, but they are adding a compatibility layer, they're opening the spec up, it sounds like they're doing everything they can to cooperate but sometimes you need to break compatibility to go forwards.

You don't think you should verify something that important before betting on it ? I didn't either - but I'm not going to assume until I know. Canonical has done non-free stuff before after all.

GPL 3, currently .. but I did make some assumptions :)

Fact is - I agree with your basic precept - if Canonical wants to try this, that's their right. I think it's incredibly stupid of them but if I'm proven wrong, that's fine too. However, a valid conclusion does not mean your premisses aren't based on made up and incorrect facts - so now, you know better :D

Maybe :D

It's totally awesome and completely changed my TV watching habits. Also bonus points for UK citizens, you don't need a TV license :D

Do they name it after a soviet space station as an indication that they are planning to take away our rights in a soviet style dictatorship?

Don't be a hypocritical drama queen.

Waa waa dictatorship, waa waa taking away freedom, waa waa forcing users

For someone who loves choice so much you're pretty hard set on X fanaticism. In any other arena X would be described as a monopoly. Should Canonical not be allowed the freedom to compete? Or should your zealotry force their roadmap?

We have competing window managers, competing graphical toolkits, competing desktop environments, X even has competing methods of rendering, a competing display server will make things interesting and looks like it's paving the way for easier cross platform application development.

Chances are Mir will be an open source, open spec standard under a nicey nice GPLish license allowing freedom of choice to distributions, application developers and end users alike.

Linux has been a fractured splintered platform for well over a decade, this doesn't really make that much of a difference.

do the 2 words 'grub' and 'single' mean anything to you? ;)

People should be taught both and then left alone to decide which one makes more sense.

Which form of creationism would you like them to teach?

Young-Earth creationism
Old Earth creationism
Gap creationism
Day-Age creationism
Progressive creationism
Neo-Creationism
Intelligent design
Creation science
Theistic evolution (evolutionary creation)
Omphalos hypothesis

It was the 3rd most useful feature for me, after the actual phone/sms components of the phone!