how is there a discussion over whether parent is trolling?

this concerns me as a /. mod...

I know that when Hollywood is involved it brings out the fanboi bots but this is starting to get out of control.

Parent's post is exactly what a /. post should be. It takes a position, assumes a level of nerd-knowledge for the reader, is succinct, and has support for its claims.

heh...and of course he didn't reference TFA...so this is definitely not a 'troll' comment...

Alot of the comments claiming he is trolling however...some of those are PR bots...mods be aware

If you think you need to switch to a different distribution to get a different desktop environment on log in, you my friend are the "dumbass". I've been using linux likely since shortly after you were born and have seen distributions come and go - as far as Linux desktops go it does the job. Eventually you grow up and realise the desktop environment is pretty irrelevant, so long as it has basic window management, a file manager and the ability to fire up an xterm. Anything else is a bonus.

They may not be negatively impacting you.... today.
But think about everything you've ever done online or on your phone. Ever. Now think about what that set of data will look like in 10 years.
THAT is the power that Google has. It's the power that Microsoft DREAMS about. I'm not saying that is good or bad, but the fact is we don't KNOW what they will, or can, do with that data.

But I do know that they can do incredible things. They can do incredible good. Look at something like street view on maps. Astounding. And it's only one example. Bottom line for me is, I don't understand why people willingly share all of their personal information. Facebook, Google, etc. There is no privacy anymore unless you really try. Banks track all of your transactions, go into a casino and they monitor your wins/losses to find that sweet spot where you'll keep playing. I am sure that there are many many other things they are doing that we don't know about. But we get complacent because of convenience.

I'm not paranoid, it is the reality of today, and of tomorrow. Google is not bullet-proof, and they could someday be bought by another company, who could then own all of their data. The information age is an incredible one, all of that information is power... and you and I don't own that power.

Well, part of the problem in the UK is successive governments with anti-national healthcare agendas trying to introduce half-cocked "internal markets" and other privatisation-by-stealth initiatives. Last time I had a MRI it was outsourced to a private contractor operating on the hospital grounds.

That's what the current restructuring is about - its supposedly about letting GPs (who aren't government employees) run the system, but since GPs have no idea how to manage a national healthcare system, the reality is that they'll outsource it to big multinational infrastructure companies. The result is a system that combines the efficiency and business sense of government with the humanitarian and social values of big business.

So, really, its a no-score draw: If you can't criticise private healthcare based on the US where its been corrupted by back-door nationalisation, then you can't criticise public healthcare based on the UK where its been corrupted by back-door privatisation.

Personally, on balance, I prefer to get my healthcare from a doctor rather than a salesman, without worrying about whether I can afford it, even if I have to wait a bit for non-urgent treatment.

...and yes, any healthcare system has to make sensible decisions about when to stop throwing money at dying patients. Its not a nice thing to have to do, but no healthcare system has infinite resources - either the money comes from taxpayers or peoples' insurance premiums. Part of the reason why you don't see "pure" free market healthcare systems is people get all upset if people are turfed out on the street to die when there is no longer a business case for treating them.

If the problem is wealth inequality, then you don't make it an explicit cap, you make it a ratio. Say, no person should be able to control more wealth than 100 times the median. That would mean, today, that a wealthy person would be in a position to live comfortably and never have to work again, which sounds like it's sufficient incentive for the people whose only motivation for doing things that benefit society is collecting personal wealth (I've never met any such people, but according to posts above they exist). And, if someone really wants more, then the incentives are set up so that they can get a lot more by increasing the median wealth a small amount...

Furthermore, whilst it may not be to everyone's taste, ubuntu is quite usable out of the box. It has a terminal, it has a browser and installing a few network admin tools is not rocket science.

Other than of course default to HTML web based rendering and let Google put out an app if appropriate (ala Apple).

Exactly. People seem to forget that google is, first and foremost an ad company. If you don't want ads, google is not the company for you to rally behind.

No, it means MS is a competitor who is violating the youtube TOS in a product that competes with Android.

Others are monetizing it. Whlst technically they are breaking the TOS they aren't big enough to warranty going after. MS is.

Certainly MS saw this coming

Have only had a brief play with unity and don't get why so much hate? Yes it is dumbed down significantly. I still have a shell, it worked out of the box, and i haven't had to touch a configuration file yet? Things don't have to be hard to use to be powerful. Besides, if you don't like it, switch to another desktop environment?

Pretty much same here. For all the IE hate we have, its easy to forget what the alternatives were back in the day. Another reason IE was so popular was the IEAK which made it easy for ISPs to pre-configure dial up settings for their users and bundle a browser all pre-configured out of the box. This was FREE, I'm pretty sure back in the Netscape days, that sort of thing required a license.

No, IE dominated because of a few reasons - dialup - it was "good enough" (from an end user perspective) and a browser was several hours to download over dialup. It was needed for Windows update to work. And, like it or not, many corporate web apps were built with it. Also, it was configurable via group policy, so enterprises like it as it enables them to ensure end user browsers are configured in a sane state (security zones, proxy settings, etc.).

Chrome != Chromium