"How often do protected monopolies result in innovation, lower prices, or good customer service?"

It's certainly not working so far. You do realize that most of North America is currently "served" by essentially protected monopolies and duopolies, yes? It's hardly a free market. The telcos have bought politicians who write laws in their favour, they've divvied up the market between each other and only barely (if at all) bother to compete. Europeans get far better at a much lower price, and they have real competition between providers.

Google's shown them what's not only possible but what's achievable with their Gb fibre experiments. Only then do the telcos feel threatened enough to say they'll match it.

It's a "regulatory captured" market. The head of the agency that's supposed police the industry to protect consumers is a former telco lobbyist.

I suspect they had insurance, but considering the MAFIAA, they probably sued to poor fool to death.

He (and Comey) are clueless figureheads with cushy jobs paid for by taxpayers. The FBI's own website recommends the use of encryption by mere users. Comey admits he isn't smart enough to know the difference between a backdoor and a front door. They're PR flacks at best.

The outgoing head of GCHQ swore up and down that there's no way their people would engage in mass surveillance, and that's true. They have the NSA do it for them, and they do it for the NSA.

Meanwhile, the DHS is pulling panty raids to shutdown trademark infringers, the FBI manufactures terrorist plots, and Congress just keeps on renewing the Patriot Act because, ... Who knows why?

Get a warrant, or STFU! Lazy, ignorant sluggards who can't be bothered with doing real police work. They swore an oath to defend the Constitution, yet I doubt they've ever even read it.

A simple interface that does what you expect without throwing throwing around this year's version of eye candy gimmicks?

I suspect you're a lot younger than me. Lots of stuff in current FLOSS distributions flummox me. Nautilus? Why? What's wrong with mount? Unity? Never seen it. :-O You don't like the standard $window_manager? Install your own, ffs! I read today people were concerned about the wallpaper in the latest Ubuntu. Ho.Ly. ....

Install a minimal distribution, then tweak it to hell and back! Feature!!! I don't understand why anyone complains about this stuff. If you can find real breakage or bugs, that's important. But it looks funny to you? Do you know how to fire up the config GUI (or even hack a text config file)? Is this a daunting challenge for you?

If so, you need to hire me, and I'll be rich! :-)

P.S. I'm brand, spankin' new to Pipedot, this's my first post, don't expect me to know what I'm doing here. Looks good so far. I've high hopes.