Gnome 3.6 and why I am the king of everything

Updated: November 3, 2012

Most people do not like pretentious bastards like me, so they sometimes miss the very crucial technical message in my rants. Try to put aside your loathing and focus on what I'm trying to say, and you might as well enjoy the humor, or the distinctive lack thereof.

So the message is as follows: I am the king of everything, and I am always absolutely right. Whatever I say becomes a truth sooner or later. There's no avoiding it. The list is long, and the latest achievement slash prophecy on my list has to do with the Gnome 3.6 desktop environment, recently released. You may have read this, and I do admit I am recycling, so feel free to ignore me. That's it, now is a good time to stop reading. However, if you want to be stunned by genius the size of Jupiter, please continue. And why am I the king, you may be asking. The answer is: the power off button in Gnome 3.6. There you go.

Teaser

History

When Gnome 3 was released, it did not have a power off button. Only suspend. The reasoning for this is as follows, and may I quote myself:

I hate this slogan. It is the most racist and condescending piece of crap ever invented by the rich and lazy. Yes, if you live in USA or Europe, then you have running water and electricity, food is available aplenty, you rarely ever worry about dying in some horrible war, you have advanced medicine to assist your pointless eking, and you have broadband.

But 80% of this planet cannot take any of the above for granted. Activities in your Gnome won't help a starving child in Sudan nor reduce the radiation leaks in Fukushima. Get a grip. You don't need to be connected while you're sitting on the crapper. You don't need to be connected when you go for a little hike in the forest. Most of all, you don't need to be connected when fighting for survival.

So how this relates to Gnome 3? Gnome 3 does not have a shutdown button inside the desktop session. You can only suspend your useless porn and microblogging, you cannot turn it off. You are also Available, in case you need to be raped by an invading army.

No power off button

I raised this topic and lots of websites happened to agree with my assessment. Many others lambasted me for not being politically correct and not trying to sound like a journalist covering the Watergate affair. However, the decision was vehemently defended. But that was then.

Fast forward one year

And lookie, lookie, I got a cookie - the power off button is back, by default.

Power off button is back

This is sort of old news. The H Open wrote about this some time ago. And openSUSE implemented a fix in Mantis on Gnome 3.4. However, officially, on stock Gnome, this is only true in version 3.6. So there you go, a bad decision reversed. Which is nice all in all, but we can use Mathematical Induction to prove Gnome 3 should be aborted.

And that's it. Problem solved. However, the point of this article is not why the Gnome developers decided to retract the implementation of the power off and suspend options in the system menu. It's not important at all. Any one change can serve as a pivotal point for discussion, although this one was the biggest. The point is that I am right.

Conclusion

There are MANY other examples. I've raised it in the openSUSE article, Gnome 3.6 article, the whole lot. No need to be repeating myself, too much. Conficker, Firefox death, see below, the future growth of computing platforms, see below, Google Panda algorithm thingie, and others. Wait and see what happens with Windows Metro nonsense. Get the idea? Good.

I think the point of this article is that you should subscribe to Dedoimedo technical religion and start worshiping me, or ask me for financial advice, because I can give you a much better and more accurate prediction how markets work than people who've supposedly studied the subject. Honest.

Last year, I said the desktops and servers would flourish yet. Do read. Various people enamored with the new trendy bullshit were quick to dismiss me. Now, if you listen to all the big shots in big companies trying to justify their margin points, they are not so quick to dismiss the desktop all of a sudden. For some unknown reason, they seem to like the third-world countries and their practical approach to computing. The last year hypes are as if they have never existed in the first place, forgotten, ignored. But Dedoimedo remembers and exults in his kingship of thought. And in the worst case, you may just have been entertained, a little. Plus you got a healthy dose of absolute truth. Boom.

I just sent myself a letter of recommendation, I'm so awesome.

Cheers.