I'm not sure what Facebook considers helpful, but from a statistical perspective a semi-unique joke-response probably reveals more than an ubiquitous sincere response. Take two people who list Christian on their profile, and take two people who list Pastafarian (you aren't the only one). I suspect that the latter pair has more in common than the former pair.

Actually, a lot of hands would still be raised. You'll note that many of the harshest comments above reference bad experiences with Wiis that they purchased. I'm not sure where this "everyone said the Wii would suck" meme came from--the Wii sold well, but it was nowhere near as amazing as a lot of us thought it would be. Many of us were excited by the concept of motion controllers. It was only after we started playing that we saw that imprecise Wii motion controls were only good for exercise and party games. (Not that there's anything wrong with exercise and party games, but judging from Nintendo's comments it seems the company would like to sell other kinds of games as well.) Among gamers, the reaction to the Wii was hype followed by disappointment. Right now gamers are skeptical of Wii U. They could still be surprised, but we'd have to see better games than we saw on the Wii or than we're seeing on the 3DS (they're still waiting for their good swimming pools to start filling up on that one).

If they stuck to this procedure--continuing to support old versions prior to a major feature change--then maybe there would be some sense to it. But Mozilla says that from now on, after X is released, X-1 is EOL. So even if FF5 doesn't have major feature changes, eventually there will be major feature changes and anyone wanting security patches will be forced to adopt it immediately.

I'm not sure I buy that logic. If I'm late to work, I might decide that speeding to get to work faster and keep my job is "worth" the risk of a speeding ticket. Heck, even if the penalty were death (and I suppose the penalty for speeding is often death), there are people desperate enough to keep their jobs to take that risk. Should we punish people more depending on how much they stand to gain from successful crime? Thus speeders late to work would be given larger fines than people just joyriding?

That's a matter of personal preference.

There are people who prefer their devices to stop working when the network stops? "I can't access my photos because the net is down. Hooray!"

Any government big enough to have local police forces is big enough to do this. There's a reason we talk about "police states" rather than "bureaucrat states" or "social worker states". This has nothing to do with big government or little government--police brutality would still be a problem in a minarchist state.

Not sure what your intention was, but note that Israel receives more aid than Egypt, and the reason we gave Egypt so much money is because they made peace with Israel.

But people like you never mention that when talking about other countries, only Israel gets called on the carpet for that anytime money is in question.

As an AC said, two posts up is someone complaining about Palestinian money coming from the EU.

But more to the point, Israel receives more US foreign aid, including military aid, then any other country. That's not even including all of the support we give to dictators in the region so that they'll take a softer stance towards Israel. That's also not including the costs of all the hate directed our way because we're supporting hated dictators.

Supporting Israel has cost America a lot of blood and treasure, but they don't seem to respect us for it.

Look, if you want me to be afraid of Google, you should point out that they know an incredible amount of information about most people using the internet. Google should be extremely easy to scaremonger about--they're always watching what I do! They've got pictures of my house! They're freaking spying on everyone, and you expect us to get worked up because of intellectual property? Because they're messing up your business model? I mean, if you want people to panic about Google, maybe you should use the word "privacy" at least once?

I'd correct one thing. Fleischer describes privacy regulations as "censorship". I doubt that he would call intellectual property laws "censorship", but one isn't more "censoring" than the other--they both prevent you from transmitting or storing information.

In general, I'd like to see one standard for corporate databases of private information, and another, weaker, standard for individuals publishing information. Where those activities intersect (me publishing my information on a corporate service), I'd like tighter regulation on how the corporation uses that information (e.g. don't datamine my "friends only" social network posts to see what brands I prefer and notify interested retailers.)

Citing Shadow of the Colossus as an example of why we don't need innovation is confused. SotC doesn't have a huge list of asterisks on the back of the box (you know, *Multiplayer! *Online Player! *User Modications! *Physics simulator!). Nonetheless, SotC stands out from the pack. SotC's innovation was omission--like it's wikipedia entry says, "The game is unusual within the action-adventure genre in that there are no towns or dungeons to explore, no characters with which to interact, and no enemies to defeat other than the colossi." It was unusual because of what wasn't there. Well-designed simplicity is innovation.

If you just re-worded this rant to be against adding stuff for the sake of adding stuff instead of against innovation, then it would been making a rather insightful point. As it is, it's just flamebait.

Maybe you didn't like Mirror's Edge, but whatever problems it has are unique problems. Citing it as an example of what's wrong with the industry is deeply obtuse.

How can you make this statement, and miss the BLISTERINGLY obvious conclusion that your Operating System is also a means, not an end?

Good question. Answer: I didn't. I wrote the following:

To the extent that Linux does have a problem here, it's an insufficient number of vendors selling pre-configured Linux consumer devices. But that's less a matter of Linux lacking hardware support and more a matter of Linux applications lagging behind. If your applications meet the customer's needs, then any customer worth worrying about will find the hardware required to run your software.

Note how I anticipated your "Pro Tip". But thanks!

I am, in other words, smart and rational enough to purchase hardware to suit my software. You just don't like the fact that my choice of software, for which I purchased the hardware, was not the same software you troll for. Apparently YOU don't like that choice, because you're the one complaining about Linux's hardware support, indicating a that you weren't smart or rational enough to purchase hardware to suit the software. I'm perfectly willing to admit (as I did in my original post) that Linux's features might be lacking in one way or another. And there's the brutal the irony of Linux zealots. I could show this thread of discussion to 100 people who indicate a willingness to try Linux, and the behavior of the linux zealots alone would be enough to turn 99 of them away from it forever. And I could sure your comment and my response to 100 people and 99 of them would agree that your concerns were idiotic. Note that I'm no Linux zealot, I'm using Windows. I'm just an anti-idiot zealot. And your post was idiocy. Linux has problems. They just don't include the one non-problem you happened to be thinking of. Generic comment questioning the species of your parentage. Please also view accompanying hand gesture. This is all the victory I need. Lashing out in such an infantile manner just means that your subconscious agrees with me.

I am consistently told by Linux-using friends that I should "absolutely be using Linux instead", that all Linux software is inherently superior, etc. Yet when trying to install any of the various Linux/MythTV flavors, I've consistently found all sorts of problems. The ATi Remote Wonder doesn't work well for most of them. The recording software either doesn't work at all, or is "spotty at best." Video playback quality is lower.

But see, this isn't Linux's problem. The number of users like you--smart/patient enough to be able to install their own operating system, not smart/rational enough to purchase hardware to suit their software rather than the other way around (hardware is a means, not an end)--is really small. They are not the primary or even significant barrier to Linux adoption, and it would do Linux little or no good to care more about them. As another poster noted jokingly, Mac OS X only runs on the shiniest of hardware, and frankly in some ways Linux's support for older hardware is better than Vista's. Microsoft and Apple made billions not giving a damn about you, so you shouldn't expect Linux to give a damn about you either. Next time be smarter in picking your hardware.

Yeah, "not my problem" and "not my fault" aren't necessarily the same thing, but in your narrow circumstances, they are. To the extent that Linux does have a problem here, it's an insufficient number of vendors selling pre-configured Linux consumer devices. But that's less a matter of Linux lacking hardware support and more a matter of Linux applications lagging behind. If your applications meet the customer's needs, then any customer worth worrying about will find the hardware required to run your software.

A better example of the phenomenon you're referring to would be support for proprietary data formats (e.g. Microsoft Office). It's not free software's fault that the proprietary software companies intentionally made this difficult. But it is free software's problem.

And I think that a swing too far in the opposite direction would be just as harmful as the (current) swing in the direction of extreme patentism (hah, I just made up a word).

I doubt it. I wonder how many research dollars are spent chasing "easy in hindsight" ideas that would fail to be discovered if patents wouldn't cover them. I suspect that most of the research money that is spent with the expectation of future patent revenue goes toward chasing ideas that are too complicated to look easy even in retrospect--stuff involving fancy math, chemistry, biology, physics, etc. Surely, even with no patent system, Amazon would still spend just as much money trying to make their site as usable as possible, and one-click ordering would still have been "invented". The drive to achieve a temporary advantage over your competition is probably a better incentive than our broken and arbitrary patent system.