Usually I try not to get involved in the mind-numbingly pointless desktop wars, but Benjamin produces one of the most flawed arguments I can remember having seen.

Fair enough that you want to use the keyboard. I'm much quicker on the keyboard than on the mouse, and presumably so are you. After a long time using computers, and CLIs in particular, this is no surprise.

Most people are not this way. I can assure you that my mother is not this way, and prefers the comfort of the mouse whne navigating around. I don't see what your assertion that 'stating that a typical Gnome user does not want keyboard is simply false' is grounded in. Have you done studies? Do you know the exact breakdown of geeks vs normal people using GNOME? Remember that it's not just for the cool kids who can write their own code anymore -- I know plenty of 'normal' people using Linux now, typically with a GNOME-based desktop.

But, it's 'but don't say it is for users sake' that really throws me. Why do you think they do it? For fun? To see how many people bitch on blogs about it when they do it? Because they hate people and this is the best practical way to take out their anger on the world? They've done studies on their userbase (e.g. the Sun usability study), and they're doing what they believe is best. This is true of every desktop: they simply do what they believe will produce the best desktop for their userbase. Sometimes this results in decisions which people think are bad. Fine then, so be it. This is what's happened here, as opposed to your suggestion of a deep-seated hate for all their users, individually and collectively, or something.

Your claim to be a normal user is simply false. I can't claim the same thing. A good rule of thumb is that if you're capable of writing the application you're using, then you're not a normal user. In some cases, this means you're not its target userbase (not always: this holds more true for, say, Evolution, than mutt).

If you have truly constructive suggestions (not using the words 'crap' and 'simply false'), then provide feedback to the developers through the appropriate channels. If you don't think GNOME is for you, try some of the many excellent other desktops (KDE, XFce, GNUstep, whatever else is around). If you like GNOME otherwise and would like to make a concrete improvement, then submit patches.

Daniel Burrows's point was simple: you are probably not GNOME's target audience (this is not specific to benj; if you are reading my blog, then odds are you aren't GNOME's target audience). So, assertions that they've got it all wrong and they should listen to you on matters of interface design aren't really going to be helpful, because you just aren't the primary target market.

PS: Just because you write it in Latin, doesn't make someone else's argument a logical fallacy.
PPS: If you're still having trouble wrestling with this entry, imagine instead someone bitching about Debian being crap because they don't include the proprietary Flash plugin, a bunch of closed-source games, VMware, etc. That's not what Debian's about. Make sense now?