Steve Loughran describes a CORBA issue with GNOME:
Gnome is built on Corba. You can tell that by changing your hostname and noting how you can't start any apps by double clicking on the icons. That is an ORB at work, if ever I saw one.
I almost always find myself in agreement with Steve, but not this time. I wouldn't describe that as an ORB at work, as that implies that an ORB forces such behavior. Don't blame the ORB, blame the joker who wrote the code that needlessly forces such behavior on poor users like Steve.