Canonical Seeks $32 Million To Make Ubuntu Smartphone

nk497 writes "Canonical has kicked off a crowdfunding campaign to raise $32 million in 30 days to make its own smartphone, called Ubuntu Edge, that can also hook up to a monitor and be used as a PC. If it meets its funding target on Indiegogo, the Ubuntu Edge is scheduled to arrive in May 2014. To get one, backers must contribute $600 (£394) on the first day or $810 (£532) thereafter. Canonical will only make 40,000 of the devices."

Comments

Why? ~nt~

[OverlordQ]

~nt~

Re:Why? ~nt~

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess Shuttleworth is tired of spending his own money on developing tech nobody wants.

Re:Why? ~nt~

[GovCheese]

As a corporate overlord to well-meaning young hippie-leaning techies, Canonical has always been a bit odd. I recall their early versions came bundled with video samples of Nelson Mandela. That sort of bald-faced symbolic sales pitch to the young and idealistic was cleverly successful even if it now seems a bit easier to criticize them for their recent decisions. If it's a walled garden they're building, I suppose it'll have lots of flowers in it.

Re:Why? ~nt~

[MightyYar]

So you can have your computer in your pocket all the time! Think of it:
1. No more storing your data on crappy services like Dropbox or Google Drive. Now it's just in your pocket, everywhere!
2. Use the same apps on the phone as on the desktop! The only difference is the input and output!
3. Hook up your phone to any desktop that has a monitor, keyboard, and mouse (but for some reason no computer)!

For those who haven't caught on, this whole post was sarcasm.

Re:Why? ~nt~

[Bill_the_Engineer]

You forgot the best feature:
4. When your phone is misplaced or stolen, your data automatically transitions from pocket data to somewhere data.

Re:Why? ~nt~

[Anonymous Coward]

No clue. Ubuntu has proven over the last few years that it doesn't care what their userbase says - they're going to do what they want. Now they want me to fork over $600 for a phone that may or may not ever exist (not to mention that if it does it may suck) or $810 if I don't jump on it right away? Thanks, but no thanks. $200 and I might would consider it as even if the OS sucked there will probably be Android ports for this thing, but there's no way I'm paying more for this than almost every other phone on the market.

Re:Why? ~nt~

[bluefoxlucid]

Pretty much you nailed it. These days, people are social democrats: they want more government services, more hand-outs, more take-everyone-else's-money-and-give-it-to-me. That's why American politics went hard into free healthcare and extended unemployment. People will bring up all kinds of things about the economy and what we "needed" to avert a supposed disaster; but the truth is all that is irrelevant, regardless of validity or lack thereof. Americans, and most of the world, are a socialist-communist people.

It's a marketing point to have a kickstarter. It gives you validity. You kickstarted your project, you put up a thing and asked for money with zero obligations. Not investors, not loans, not negotiated marketing deals. "Please give me free money." People associate this behavior with the little man looking to make an ambitious move in the market, to create something corporate overlords won't put money into the risk pot for. It gives them a warm, squishy feeling inside.

Re:Why? ~nt~

[drinkypoo]

I don't know about anybody else, but I expect that society should be giving us all more for less as progress results in more reward for less input, and there's more to go around. The sad thing is, wages don't even need to keep up with productivity, or at least they don't have to advance as quickly, in order to represent satisfactory progress.

Re:Why? ~nt~

[Anonymous Coward]

Because that's what I want. The power of a cell phone, but with the form factor of a desktop. What's not to love?

Re:Why? ~nt~

[Noughmad]

Publicity, or at I least I hope so.

He could pay for the whole thing himself, and nobody would buy it. If, on the other hand, he mostly fund it himself through puppets on IGG, it will get widespread praise for breaking all sorts of records, listening to the people. It will also give the idea that people want this, so people will actually want this.

Re:Why? ~nt~

[h4rr4r]

Why would you not have backups?

Back it up like you would any other device.

Re:Why? ~nt~

[postbigbang]

Posted without sarcasm:

1. Maybe there won't be the quid pro quo of all of your private information so you can use the "free" apps

2. Perhaps your carrier won't be able to dive into your phone and change any old setting they desire

3. With luck, maybe your apps won't have obscene data needs that can be sold on the open market for bigdamndata engines

4. And maybe we can have apps that just do something, rather then the crippled-til-you-pay model.

But Canonical hasn't guaranteed anything, and the carriers won't love them unless Canonical allows them to feed their shareholders, so it's unlikely as a result that carriers will want the devices to market in the first place.

Oh, wait.....

Re:Why? ~nt~

[jandrese]

I have to admit, I'm not exactly jumping out of my seat to send $600+ to the company that's been fucking up Ubuntu pretty badly for the past couple of years.

Re:Why? ~nt~

[GodfatherofSoul]

Here are 3 reasons why IMO:

1. Apple products are good, but expensive
2. Android products are cheaper, but the lack of standards causes all kinds of platform development issues. Personally, I've also had issues with performance and stability.
3. A new platform can sell itself as THE privacy option. Give users more control or access over the platform to see what applications and the OS is up to.

Re:Why? ~nt~

[ZombieBraintrust]

Privacy? The goverment is snooping at the ISP level. Coorporations are spying with apps. Your OS isn't going to help much when you can't trust the software or the communication channel.

Re:Why? ~nt~

[cusco]

Yes, I realize that the post is sarcasm, but really I don't see the issue. 1) Dropbox or other services should still be available, why wouldn't they? I can currently get there from my phone over the cell network, or from my laptop through the corporate network. 2) Why is this a disadvantage? Apps can already change their display mode depending on the screen resolution that they're being shown on. When you have a keyboard and large monitor available you could take advantage of them, when you don't you would make do with a small screen and on-screen keyboard. 3) Have you never used a laptop docking station? I have a Nexus 7, which is pretty much the ideal form factor for me. If I could use the thing as a phone with a bluetooth headset and get rid of my current cellphone I'd be a happy camper. If I could plug it in to the network with a keyboard and monitor when I get to work I could toss the laptop too. Yes, I know that the hardware isn't quite there yet but it will be within a couple of years. I don't do heavy-duty CAD work or number crunching, so my laptop just sits there and idles at 2-8% CPU utilization all the time anyway. My phone has better battery life than my laptop. The Nexus 7's display is an order of magnitude more usable than the phone's. I would love to have the device you disparage, even though it probably won't work for you.

Re: Why? ~nt~

[Anonymous Coward]

Why so negative? Shuttleworth has one thing going for him, he haven't sold out to government 'affiliate programs' yet, his unlocked products are friendly, open source and very welcome!

Re:Why? ~nt~

[Anonymous Coward]

Privacy? The goverment is snooping at the ISP level. Coorporations are spying with apps. Your OS isn't going to help much when you can't trust the software or the communication channel.

That's why he said "can sell itself as."

Re:Why? ~nt~

[Bill_the_Engineer]

There you go.. ruining humor with facts and common sense. ;)

Re:Why? ~nt~

[MightyYar]

Of course you would be able to use Dropbox and friends, but you can do that today on any of the smartphones already available.

I've yet to see a single app scale well to not only screen size, but also input method (mouse vs touch). Not that it is impossible, but app developers seem hard-pressed to cope with simple resolution and screen changes... throw in a mouse and keyboard and all bets are off.

Re: docking station. In the very old days when laptops had horrendous screens and there was nothing like USB (or even firewire) to hot-plug in accessories, yes, they were very helpful. These days, they mostly serve as a giant overpriced USB hub.

Yes, I know that the hardware isn't quite there yet but it will be within a couple of years.

This device, as spec'd, is not that hardware.

Re:Why? ~nt~

[rtfa-troll]

There are plenty of us who want Linux Mint and easy to use Linux. The mere fact that Shuttleworth went off on a weird Unity loop and left it for others to commercialise the technology he originally developed doesn't mean we don't want or shouldn't recognise his vision and financial contribution. I think that going direct to the contribution page and booking a cool new Linux device doesn't sound like a major pain for a bunch of us.

If people keep buying the interesting new Linux directed devices then this will keep the hardware designers making them. That can never be bad.

Re:Why? ~nt~

[DuckDodgers]

If you buy a modern smart phone without a contract in the US, $600 is a pretty normal price. That's for companies like Samsung, HTC, and Apple, which make millions of phones in a batch so they can negotiate a bulk discount from their suppliers.

Canonical is making 40,000 phones at most, so that's too few to get a bulk discount. I think $830 is a reasonable price. However, I don't have $830 handy, or $600. Or $60. I have debt and kids that need to visit an orthodontist. So I'm out.

Re: Why? ~nt~

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, like I'm going to give money to a guy so incompetent he called his own customers out as idiots when they dared question the move to the Unity fustercluck.

Spend your own money, Shuttleworth, all mine has now gone to Debian. The sooner people realise that Ubuntu gives you nothing more than Debian with a few tweaks, the sooner we can see it off as another failed experiment.

Re: Why? ~nt~

[krups gusto]

To summarize, more poor people is awesome as long as you're rich.

Re: Why? ~nt~

[krups gusto]

The privacy option polled poorly for the target demographic of born but not dead yet. More studies are encouraged for fringe groups out of that range...

Re:Why? ~nt~

[Microlith]

Not to mention that with a device based on a more "standard" Linux, booting other "standard" Linux platforms should actually be a fairly painless step.

Re: Why? ~nt~

[Anonymous Coward]

To summarize further, anything is awesome as long as you're rich.

Re:Why? ~nt~

[cusco]

Ah. I thought you were disparaging the concept in general, not just this version of it.

I can type on the Nexus on-screen keyboard, even though I don't like it much. If I could plug the thing into a docking station of some type (USB or otherwise) then I can touch type 40+ WPM. I don't use the laptop docking station on my desk, which adds two monitors, an ergonomic keyboard (ick), and a mouse, but my coworker does (he does a different job than I do).

Anyway, my ideal device is a Nexus 7 form factor, with cell phone, 4G wireless, and some type of standardized non-proprietary docking station and decent battery life.

Re:Why? ~nt~

[MightyYar]

Toshiba has the Thrive with dock. The dock takes a microSD, Mini USB, Mini-phone Audio, Power Input, and HDMI Digital Audio/Video. It can of course use a Bluetooth keyboard, so you don't really need a dock for that :) The Thrive is an Android 3.2 beast, and at least some models can be rooted.

Re:Why? ~nt~

[tftp]

Some poor negro kid in my city (it's full of poverty-stricken blacks, and Good Will donations go exactly to the store you put them in) now gets a $70 pair of pants for $5. Now he has nice pants, a few repairs, but they're nice. He doesn't have to buy pants, and that wealth stays in society.

On the flip side of the coin, you just removed the last reason for that black kid to go out and earn some money. Why should he work if eventually some white dude will throw goodies at him? (This can be extended to the government, whose social services act as a lifetime free money supply.) Why then should we wonder that black kids don't work and don't learn?

Using the poor as a recycler for your old clothes is arrogant. We do not need poor as such. It would be nice if everyone is reasonably well off. However for that to be fair everyone has to work. This is not going to happen simply because there are no jobs for less educated (or less talented where it matters) people. As result, every working stiff has to pay for ten non-working stiffs. That's how poverty spreads.

To prevent that you need jobs. But there won't be any more jobs for manual laborers. Those jobs are domain of Mexicans (agricultural work still requires a lot of manual labor.) What to do? I don't think anyone has a working solution. The efficiency of labor is already too high. Luddites, I guess, had their panties in a bunch a century or two too early.

Re:Why? ~nt~

[orasio]

The great mistake of society is a desire to eliminate the poor.

You make sense. But it's a very subversive thing to say, for an American.
Your point is that if someone is to be rich, then someone else needs to be poor.
Plus, you don't really care about poverty, you just care about your standards of living.
But following your ideology, if one were to get rid of poverty, one would first need to get rid of the rich. You can't have everyone living above poverty levels, if you don't first get rid of the rich.

You discovered marxism. Congratulations. And good luck implementing that in the United States.

Re:Why? ~nt~

[Pseudonym]

It's a marketing point to have a kickstarter. It gives you validity.

It's market research to have a kickstarter. If you reach your funding goal, you know that people will pay money for it. If you don't reach your goal, you find out that they won't, and you didn't have to go to the trouble of building it first. (*cough* surface *cough*)

Re:Why? ~nt~

[Anonymous Coward]

As a corporate overlord to well-meaning young hippie-leaning techies, Canonical has always been a bit odd. I recall their early versions came bundled with video samples of Nelson Mandela. That sort of bald-faced symbolic sales pitch to the young and idealistic was cleverly successful even if it now seems a bit easier to criticize them for their recent decisions. If it's a walled garden they're building, I suppose it'll have lots of flowers in it.

Is it still a walled garden when each line of code is easily accessible? Is it still a walled garden when I can shut off any of the shitty features Ubuntu has implemented (Amazon results, install alternate desktop using packages Canonical itself provides.) Can you say that about Google, Apple, MS?

People keep riffing Shuttleworth and Canonical as villains within the OS/Free Software world. They don't contribute back to upstream enough and shit. Leaving out the part about how the code is right there for people to take and use as they see fit. Which really, is something the OS/FS crowd constantly bullies new users over "The code is right there, DIY."

I think the haters are really just pissed off that Canonical has done a better job at selling Linux than they ever did.

Re:Why? ~nt~

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a marketing point to have a kickstarter. It gives you validity. You kickstarted your project, you put up a thing and asked for money with zero obligations.

I'm pretty sure the 5000+ people who have signed up for getting phones if the crowdsourcing campaign is funded expect Canonical to feel pretty darn obligated to give them the phones they paid for. "Crowdfunding" like this is just a fancy way of saying "early preorder".

Re:Why? ~nt~

[Anonymous Coward]

In summary, ending poverty is bad because then no one would buy used stuff?

You do know that people buy stuff used for reasons other than cost, right?

Re:Why? ~nt~

[cusco]

Damn, Toshiba. Same story as always. 3/4 of what I want, for twice the price I'm willing to pay. The 10 inch Excite (successor to the Thrive) has the features that I want in the 7 inch form factor, and the docking station is a proprietary plug. Thanks for that. If Toshiba's doing it now the rest of the market will be doing it in a couple of years (and Apple will probably be taking credit for it).

Re:Why? ~nt~

[Anonymous Coward]

As opposed to "automatically backed up by the Neo-Tshekists" ???

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheka

Re:Why? ~nt~

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, what a cuuute Commericalware $hill. How come the gobbermint want to infiltrate software, too ? Maybe because of crypto and Mixnets (of which TOR is not the most aggressive one) ?

Closed Source == Tight Shackles by the 1%.

Re:Why? ~nt~

[Anonymous Coward]

You pay $200 for an Android plus a nearly infinite amount of intelligence about yourself. Which the Second Coming of Felix Tshershinsky will have at his perusal. Yay !

Read this, a more important text than the bible or whatever crap literature you read until this point:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_Dzerzhinsky

Re:Why? ~nt~

[Anonymous Coward]

Not true - he's trying to make this phone after all.

Re:Why? ~nt~

[Anonymous Coward]

the technology he originally developed

the technology he originally paid for

There, fixed that for you.

Re:Why? ~nt~

[Anonymous Coward]

Or alternatively we need people to stop being such shallow consumers. There is nothing stopping you from having 'mismatched plates' other than your own apparently fragile ego.

Look at me! I have money! MONEY! *

* May also have a small penis.

Re:Why? ~nt~

[gl4ss]

the technology he originally developed

the technology he originally paid for

There, fixed that for you.

wait, shuttleworth originally now paid for debian? I thought he just paid for all the crap people didn't want and took some "design choices" with audio, desktop etc that some would argue would have been better off unpaid...

Re:Why? ~nt~

[MightyYar]

Even Samsung has a proprietary connector. I think that is acceptable for docking stations, though, as long as USB is also available (unlike Apple). I mean, the docking station has to be pretty integrated with the device - I can see why they would avoid a standard plug that people might accidentally jack into.

The price does seem quite high considering the competition is at half that. The Nexus 7 dock sucks - all it does is add an audio out and charge... even the old video iPods had video out on their docks!

Re:Why? ~nt~

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering the specs on the Nexus 4 phone (minus of course the horrifically assinine lack of an sd slot), and the price being 1/2 of that 600... no 830 is not a reasonable price.

The ONLY reason 600 is a normal price is because cell phones are the only industry where people have been brainwashed into paying MSRP or locking themselves into a contract in order to get a discount. MSRP is almost always grossly inflated; this is one of the reasons why commonly amongst electronics they don't sell for MSRP (or at least not for very long after release).
Unfortunately, the carriers effectively have more or less a collective monopoly on cell phone sales in the US. People are too afraid to buy phones from other sources than their carrier, the carrier has zero incentive to sell phones for less than MSRP since doing so makes them more money or allows them to lock you into a contract, and the manufacturers aren't making any real effort to sell to consumers or retail channels and break the carrier stranglehold because by going along for the ride they probably get a higher wholesale price and better margins.

The last estimate I could find for making the iphone, including BOM and assembly and shipping, was still under a 300/unit cost even for the 64gb. People happily eat this shit up and ask for more. As long as that continues to happen, the rest of us who think this is garbage will continue to be stuck with very few options, if any, for decent smartphones at anything approaching a reasonable price. Even buying used phones is getting more difficult because any retail channel selling used phones is typically selling them for high prices, and buying from private parties becomes risky with the new blacklists on GSM phones and the supposed sharing of those blacklists amongst carriers as of next year. It's suddenly a lot harder to justify spending 250 on a used GS3 when you know that guy who just sold it to you can call up his phone insurance and report it stolen a few days after you bought it and you're screwed.

Re:Why? ~nt~

[Anonymous Coward]

There are 7" tablets that you can use as a phone. Samsung typically leave the phone app in there cellular-enabled tablets, and I know someone who uses a Galaxy Tab as their phone.

Re:Why? ~nt~

[Anonymous Coward]

shutup hippy

Re:Why? ~nt~

[drinkypoo]

It would be nice if everyone is reasonably well off. However for that to be fair everyone has to work.

Who told you that? They lied to you. We have more than enough production to provide for everyone, yet unemployment is rising in many parts of the world and more jobs are being automated away. The work will still be done, but it won't be done by humans. Your premise is ridiculous at best.

Re:Why? ~nt~

[Anonymous Coward]

$600 is a normal reasonable price for a well tested device that's been through a lot of R&D, not some crappy Canonical prototype that will have support dropped the moment it's in the user's hands. If the Google G1 phone taught me anything it's not to buy the first device. Let everyone else be the testers, I want a supported phone thanks.

Re:Why? ~nt~

[Anonymous Coward]

Some decisions you can't really blame them for. For example nautilus is pretty fucked up taking out features each release but that's not their fault, they put in Ubuntu what they're given from Debian which is the latest version of whatever comes out. ..but yeah, I'm asking myself the same question, they're not exactly winning hearts and minds right now with the kind of people that would fund this phone and frankly they missed the "new smart phone" craze by years. Almost no one wants a new competitor on the market any more, if Nokia can't succeed with Ovi which they pushed tens of millions into why would Canonical with their unproven crappy prototype phone?

Re:Why? ~nt~

[tftp]

If some work and other do not, but they all are fed and clothed, it is unfair because the working individuals expend their labor. One could say that workers are paid much better than the non-working people, but today the difference is not that great. With more and more people not working, the government has to pay unemployed people, or else mass deaths (and riots) will occur. Working people see it as injustice and stop working. See USSR in 1990's - that's what happened. In the end, the society has no goods because nobody is willing to produce them.

Communism postulates that work is optional, and is done only as long as the worker wants to work. That in itself is not unusual; the whole F/OSS is made possible by such workers. However there is no pathway from here to there. Automated factories exist today, but their products are not given away for free. In an ultimate case we will have one owner of all factories; many such factories, 100% automated; and 6 billion people who have no income to buy output of those factories. What reason would the factory owner have to maintain those factories if they produce no income? Perhaps in a severely communist society the owner would be killed (as communists love to do) and the factories will be taken over by the hungry masses.

Re:Why? ~nt~

[bluefoxlucid]

It's impossible to provide labor jobs that provide a middle-class living wage for everyone. Providing a living-wage for everyone has proven ridiculous; people have room mates for a reason, and back in the day we employed children to provide for families. Family business, and even families sending their 10 and 12 year olds to work in the fields for pay to support the family. Now all that is illegal.

Someone brought up that minimum wage today would be $22.50/hr or thereabouts if it had kept up with what it was when we started. I pointed out that the cost of crew has moved McDonalds to cut staffing by almost 50% (there were way more people behind the counter in a McDonalds in the 90s--my mom has been a crew manager in several restaurants, having to track labor costs and make staffing decisions, and she's seen the decline first-hand and provided some valuable insight into how restaurants handle labor costs, for what that's worth), and that overall the cost of a McDonalds Value Meal would be around $25-$35 if they had to pay their crew $22/hr. Be mindful they pay them about $7/hr, and it costs $6-$8 for a Value Meal. Be mindful McDonalds has cut out a lot of the straight waste, throwing tons of food away and burning excess energy, in the past two decades.

Mexicans have to work, too. Why do they come here for jobs? Aren't there jobs in Mexico for all those little brown people? Have you considered that, maybe, if some parts of the world simply can't sustain themselves, maybe the idea that we could is just insane?

Re:Why? ~nt~

[tftp]

I have no objection to Mexican workers - they are, actually, honest workers. Few people would be willing to crawl across the field that is miles long, under the blazing sun. Farmers insist that without Mexicans they couldn't survive. Machines do only so much.

But Mexicans are so good at agricultural jobs that they displaced everyone else. You can become a redneck too, if you are willing to work for pennies. Few people do - even social security pays better, and you don't even need to work. If the $deity suddenly looks through the clouds and magically forces farmers to pay good wages for that labor, agricultural products will cost 10x more, and they become too expensive for poorer people. They get hit no matter what.

Mexicans have to work, too. Why do they come here for jobs? Aren't there jobs in Mexico for all those little brown people?

Why do Mexicans come across the border? Because it pays better in the USA. They certainly can work in MX, it's just the fruits of their labor will be purchased for pennies per ton by agricultural cartels, and there is nobody else to sell to. Whose fault is that? But it's always easier for any one individual to vote with his feet. The fight against corrupted politicians may take more than a lifetime; a person has to think about his family first.

Re:Why? ~nt~

[bluefoxlucid]

It's true that someone must be rich for another to be poor. They are relative terms. However, for our discussion, we consider the poor as the destitute, the suffering, those who by an absolute standard are below a comfortable living. The middle class are comfortable and just want more--it would be more accurate to say that for there to be a middle class there must be the rich, because if we eliminate the rich then those of us with our own houses, two cars, and fresh pressed clothes would be the Rockerfellers of the world and we would REVEL at being the top of society even without actually elevating ourselves from what we are now. The middle class contempt for the rich is entirely a matter of envy; not having the emotion in any meaningful way (I'm a sociopath, I don't connect to people in such a way as to want to be more like them or to empathize with and feel hollow about not sharing in their good fortune), I don't have it, and thus see myself as a very rich man.

My standards of living are unaffected by the standards of living of others; however, the destruction of wealth in society will eventually come to affect me as well as everyone else. When everyone can have anything they wish, they will become wasteful. They will no longer concern themselves with the costs of things, and the destruction of the wealth of society will come in force. The system then collapses.

Marxism idealizes that we can bring everyone to the same level by enforced sharing and waste minimization, or at least by the application of force of labor. That is: if there is waste, we will use it as effectively as possible simply by dictating that people will take the waste and do something useful with it. While this is effective, it's not very fun. It also applies a cost to everyone for the good of society.

What I have discovered instead is that the destruction of things of value has a broad-reaching societal cost, but a null immediate cost to the prior owner. That is, it costs you nothing to throw your useful clothes and tools into the trash; it also costs you nothing to surrender them to collection for charitable organizations. Surrendering them for use by others who can derive remaining value from them will improve the wealth of society, while destroying them harms the wealth of society. I do not see a problem with society providing incentive for this: as your actions at no cost to you may have helped others but you have chosen not to, so then are you relieved of an equivalent amount of wealth as what you have destroyed; and as your actions may, at times, incur a small inconvenience of sorting trash from recyclables or reusables, so then are you supplied relief for such a burden as gratitude for applying the two seconds thought to select which of two bins to place an object into.

Mind you I am slightly simplifying things. There's a Goodwill near me that will give me a receipt, needed for me to claim tax deductions for donations. Easier, there is a PlanetAid clothing bin near the liquor store behind my house, near the church down the street, and generally around gas stations every mile or two, but no receipt means no paper trail to make claims on taxes. Most any church will also take donated goods, and they may give you a receipt or may not; they're everywhere. In any case, there's no burden on me to sort out my reusables--if I'm cleaning out my house, I'm sorting things out anyway and will be yanking out old clothes and other goods, so I'm already pulling stuff out of the closets and stuffing them in trash bags--but there is a few seconds involvement in sticking the bag in the back of my car on the way to a gas station, or several minutes in diverting to Good Will. Simply putting the bag outside for trash pick-up saves me a few minutes of my life, but costs disposal charges AND deprives society of the value of the goods taken as trash.

I'm sure the concept of return-on-investment isn't so foreign to you. It's why I switched to 100% clean energy--solar, wind, geothermal. It costs me $3-$5

Re:Why? ~nt~

[bluefoxlucid]

It's bad because people would throw away everything perfectly useful. Think about if, at the end of the year, people threw all the money they still had in the trash to avoid paying taxes. How would the economy react? Now think about that, but with things that are useful.

The only solution is to force people to work. Somehow. Make them dig holes and fill them back in again, essentially. Produce new shoes--and because people want more new shoes when theirs start to wear down, they'll throw out perfectly serviceable shoes... so we'll just force more people to make more shoes.

In Capitalism, this is called a "bubble", and it ends up with a run-up of costs and a slowing of consumption. A bust follows this, and then consumption drops off. With the reduced demand and reduced profits, labor is no longer needed or is too expensive, and thus wages are cut and layoffs are made.

In Keynesian economics (Krugman, Obama, Romney), we fix this by encouraging the bubble, trying to tweak the knobs to keep it growing and growing without busting. It never works.

In Austrian economics (Ron Paul's school), we fix this by discouraging the bubble, applying taxes and other disincentives to prevent massive supply growth and price inflation. It often works.

In Communism, we fix this by enforcing restrictions on production and on prices. No bubble, no bust. It has a high societal cost, but generally works for the immediate purpose.

In Marxism, we reach a utopian society where people see that there is a need for a thing and so work to fill that need out of the goodness and love in their hearts.

There's like 4000 layers of abstraction here. The path to "throwing away good clothes" and "society collapses economically" is not exactly a straight one, but it's a very well-known concept. The concept is called "wealth".

Re:Why? ~nt~

[bluefoxlucid]

You make a good point, but obviously the market in Mexico is saturated. If I can purchase work for pennies per tonne and it's worth more in the US for a worker to work, then obviously the Mexican cartels aren't motivated by the lack of labor destroying their businesses. They must be able to find labor for pennies per tonne. If all the Mexicans came to the US to work, the agricultural cartels in Mexico wouldn't be able to make any profit--they'd have to provide incentive for Mexicans to work at their labor camps. That could include beheading a few peoples' 11 year old daughters, or offering higher wages.

But you also make my point for me: If we paid a better wage, shit would be too expensive for poor people. Some people must be at the bottom. If we found a way around that, we'd have a destructive spiral that would come back to bite us later. Part of that is, in fact, the destruction of valuable goods; and we need poor people as a sink to absorb our valuable goods and keep the wealth in our society. It is our first obligation to ourselves as a whole, but the primary beneficiaries are the least fortunate.

Re:Why? ~nt~

[DuckDodgers]

Why the vitriol? We both know this is aimed at Canonical/Ubuntu fans with disposable income. If you're not a fan or you don't have the money to burn, there is no harm done.

Re:Why? ~nt~

[DuckDodgers]

Good points, I hadn't thought to question MSRP on smart phones before. Thanks. Are you aware of any other channels for legal, new smart phones I can activate on a US carrier?

Re:Why? ~nt~

[bbsalem]

You mean weeds.

This world needs fewer FAT EGOS to mess things up, and if you mean it is OK because it is Mark Shuttleworth's money, then fine, poetic justice is that he loses his shirt. Possibly the only merit of Ubuntu is that it installs easier than its parent, Debian, but Shuttleworth's grand scheme to make Linux mobile is half baked from the start. Unity was a disaster because most of the platforms were desktops and Unity put in extra steps that are not needed and there is still no mobile platform for it. The plan in the video, which I could only stomach for 80% of it, is admission that there will not be a real platform for Ubuntu mobile that will compete with what is already there, including Windows Fone.

It isn't that it is always a bad idea to run *inux on a mobile device, but why not a well debugged KDE desktop with a USB keyboard and external screen That sounds like a Rasberry Pi with more memory, That exists already.

So we are dealing with an idiot with too much money and too much narcissism for his own good. I hope he goes down in flames. Within a year, someone will put a mobile phone mount on the back of a desktop monitor and let you run Linux on any number of devices.

Re:Why? ~nt~

[drinkypoo]

If some work and other do not, but they all are fed and clothed, it is unfair because the working individuals expend their labor.

Oh, now you want life to be fair? In that case, everyone should get paid the same for doing the same work. Now get on that, chop chop. The fact is that no system will be fair in every case. As well, some people want to work and some people don't want to work. Why is it fair for some people to get to do what they want, and some people to have to do what they don't want? You're deciding what is and isn't fair arbitrarily.

Re:Why? ~nt~

[tftp]

You're deciding what is and isn't fair arbitrarily.

That's the key question here. Who and how decides what is fair?

The answer to that is, of course, that these norms are set by the society. The mechanistic allocation of fairness (based on expended labor vs. received rewards) is the top layer, and the most visible one. But then there are things that people do for free or receive for free, and they are considered to be fair for everyone involved.

If you want to object to the principle of "who does not work shall not eat" (which is remarkably shared by the Bible and by Marxists) then you are, of course, welcome. As they say, "a government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul." Governments all over the world used, and still use, this principle to convert non-political (administrative) power that they have into political power. There are many Pauls out there who are demanding their daily bread, even though they don't work. To that end they vote for every populist that promises them the wealth from the public treasury. That's how democracies die. The next step would be complete stagnation of industry, smothered by taxes of every kind. And then you will be welcoming a strongman who will clean the stables, preparing for another cycle. That's how things go for all the known human history, no matter what is the name of the economic system.

Re:Why? ~nt~

[Raenex]

However, I don't have $830 handy, or $600. Or $60. I have debt and kids that need to visit an orthodontist. So I'm out.

Have you considered crowdfunding? Maybe throw in a before and after smiling picture of the kids for pledgers.

Re:Why? ~nt~

[DuckDodgers]

Thanks for the suggestion, but honestly it's not a priority for me. For my own Android smart phone I use talk, text, navigation, and about once a month I open the web browser because I want to research something and I don't have a laptop handy. I'm an Ubuntu fanboy so if I had the cash to spare I would get one just to support Canonical, even if I didn't use it much.

I would rather see crowdfunding go for more worthy causes - genuine charity, the creation of new art, music, books, movies, and roleplaying games, or backing some useful technical project.

Re:Why? ~nt~

[module0000]

Don't listen to the naysayers - you are correct. Everyone needs to work, and a world where everyone is working and being rewarded is very desirable at this stage.

Re:Why? ~nt~

[jkflying]

Well, he didn't *develop* Debian either. So AC must have been referring to Ubuntu.

For 32 million i want it to make coffee

[ArcadeX]

Would rather have a http://pomegranatephone.com/

Re:For 32 million i want it to make coffee

[Bill_the_Engineer]

Thanks for the link. The feature that made me laugh the loudest was the harmonica demonstration.

Why no direct link ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why no direct link to the Ubuntu campaign on indiegogo ?

Re:Why no direct link ?

[Lunix Nutcase]

How can PCPro get page hits and ad impressions by linking to the IndieGoGo page?

Actual Link

[Ynot_82]

Actual link to indiegogo page, which is missing from FTS
http://igg.me/at/ubuntuedge

Re:Actual Link

[i kan reed]

Also, it's worth pointing out that 32 million is 3 times the largest successfully crowd funded project ever. This will never happen, especially since indiegogo has way less than half the financial user base of kickstarter.

Re:Actual Link

[hobarrera]

Kickstarter has HTML5 videos, indiegogo requires flash. That'll loose them plenty of visitors amogst the geek crowds - who are they targeting!?

Re:Actual Link

[Anonymous Coward]

It's interesting he went indiegogo instead of kickstarter.

Re:Actual Link

[Tr3vin]

I think it makes it easier to back, since indiegogo uses paypal over amazon payments.

Re: Actual Link

[Anonymous Coward]

Indiegogo serves the entire world while Kickstarter is US or UK only.

Re:Actual Link

[kav2k]

And yet Canonical are such good buddies with Amazon..

Too much bullshit from Canonical

[Animats]

Canonical has bullshitted too much in the past to be taken seriously about this. Several times, they've announced that new products from major vendors (Asus, Dell) would run their version of Linux. Never happened. They need to STFU until the product ships.

Re:Too much bullshit from Canonical

[rullywowr]

+1000

Re:Too much bullshit from Canonical

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed. I would have considered contributing three or four years ago, but there's just too much to hate about Canonical these days.

Re:Too much bullshit from Canonical

[Anonymous Coward]

Could you link to those announcements please?

Re:Too much bullshit from Canonical

[gl4ss]

I vaguely remember them claiming we would have been running this already by now.. I mean, if they really had the sw stack plunked down..
they're outright liars though as a whole, though maybe in their minds just "optimists". the concept itself isn't impossible, but I'd rather see the sw stack run first on something like asus padfone - and well, quite frankly, running something else than ubuntu.

"All of the funding we receive goes directly towards producing the device for expected delivery in May 2014. The only pockets getting filled by this campaign will be yours when the handset arrives." well yah, I suppose so, if Ubuntu employees don't have pockets.

the stuff they've been up to for the past 1.5 years though sounds like they're running out of money(all the bs announcements are aimed not at consumers, they're aimed at investors, and this is quite directly just "give us money to run for a year").

Re:Too much bullshit from Canonical

[Anonymous Coward]

Err, there *have* been products from major vendors running their version of Linux.

See: http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/xps-13-linux/pd
and http://www.ubuntu.com/partners/asus/

Re:Too much bullshit from Canonical

[Joining Yet Again]

This. They want $32 million in a month to build 40,000 units of yet-another-phone? Why?

I don't really understand the crowdfunding craze. The idea with capitalism is that people risk their capital to make bank. With this method - like with peer-to-peer lending - the wealthy investor is merely a middleman, setting up a crowdfunding platform from which it collects commission, but risking none of its own money in the businesses/loans themselves. For crowdfunding, the "investors" are the dwindling middle classes, who give up their money and might at best receive a trinket - certainly not even repayment of capital, let alone interest or shares.

Yeah, ok, "risk capital to make bank" hasn't been capitalism since the first limited liability corporation was set up, but at least there was some semblance of risk.

From an investor wisdom PoV, it's exactly the same bullshit banks went through in the last decade, moving from know-your-borrower loans to computer-says-yes. I guess the only plus point is that then the average citizen was surprised that they had to pay for bailouts, whereas now the citizen is still getting fleeced, but it happens more quickly.

Re:Too much bullshit from Canonical

[kasperd]

Canonical has bullshitted too much in the past to be taken seriously about this. Several times, they've announced that new products from major vendors (Asus, Dell) would run their version of Linux. Never happened.

I am writing this comment on a Dell that came with Ubuntu preinstalled.

Re:Too much bullshit from Canonical

[composer777]

It works great if the risk taker is poor or middle class and cash strapped, and I think that's what it is (or should be) intended for. Otherwise, I agree, it's ridiculous for a billionaire to use this method for funding, but that's why he's a billionaire (along with all the other billionaires). It's because he knows how to work the system and has few scruples.

Re:Too much bullshit from Canonical

[Again]

Canonical has bullshitted too much in the past to be taken seriously about this. Several times, they've announced that new products from major vendors (Asus, Dell) would run their version of Linux. Never happened. They need to STFU until the product ships.

Who is voting up this dumbass?

http://en.community.dell.com/techcenter/os-applications/w/wiki/3685.dell-xps-13-laptop-developer-edition-a-client-to-cloud-solution-project-sputnik.aspx
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B009F1I16K/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B009F1I16K&linkCode=as2&tag=wwwcanoniccom-20#productDetails

Re:Too much bullshit from Canonical

[MrEricSir]

Several times, they've announced that new products from major vendors (Asus, Dell) would run their version of Linux. Never happened.

[citation needed]

Re:Too much bullshit from Canonical

[Trax]

Here's a list of Ubuntu hardware partners including Dell and Asus and their products. I'm not sure why you're blaming Canonical when the vendors are responsible for putting the hardware out.

Re:Too much bullshit from Canonical

[Again]

Canonical has bullshitted too much in the past to be taken seriously about this. Several times, they've announced that new products from major vendors (Asus, Dell) would run their version of Linux. Never happened.

I am writing this comment on a Dell that came with Ubuntu preinstalled.

What is this? A voice of reason and fact? I insist you take back your harsh statement and engage in fallacy and untruth!

Re:Too much bullshit from Canonical

[master_kaos]

I like how they have an $80,000 option, and then want an additional $100 for shipping. Really we just gave you 80k and you want extra to ship it??
  I think the crowd funding is great for projects where the person would have no way to fund the project on their own, but these private for profit businesses doing this is ridiculous, they want no risk but all the profit and glory.

I know double fine did it(I even supported it) but at least you can see where they are going with not going with a publisher

Re:Too much bullshit from Canonical

[Anonymous Coward]

Having a net worth of $500 million makes you a billionaire? Has the definition of billionaire changed recently?

Re:Too much bullshit from Canonical

[Animats]

Could you link to those announcements please?

There are lots of Canonical announcements about machines coming preloaded with Unbuntu. Not many shipments.

• "Canonical Partners with ASUS for Ubuntu Linux" (2011) "This is part of a new engagement and it's great to be working with such an innovative player," Chris Kenyon, vice president OEM Services at Canonical told InternetNews.com. "To put this in perspective we are now working directly with Asus, Lenovo, Dell and Acer on enabling systems."
• "Dell to offer Ubuntu on a select assortment of budget computers" (2007) "Dell announced plans today to offer Ubuntu Linux 7.04 preinstalled on "select consumer products." Dell has at various times offered some overpriced Linux options, but never a "budget" one. Dell currently offers a Ubuntu laptop for developers. It costs $1549 and will ship Real Soon Now. The same machine is available now with Windows for $999.
• "Ubuntu To Ship on 5% of All PCs Sold Next Year" (2012) Yeah, right.

There are other tablet and phone Ubuntu announcements, which you can find with Google. Someone is taking "pre-orders" for a Ubuntu tablet for delivery in late 2013.

Despite all their press releases, Canonical seems unable to get any manufacturer to ship a preloaded Ubuntu machine in volume.

Re:Too much bullshit from Canonical

[Sarten-X]

I don't really understand the crowdfunding craze.

Yeah, that's pretty clear.

The idea with capitalism...

...is orthogonal to crowdsourcing. Under capitalism, individuals own property. That's it. They're free to use that property (including money) to make more money if they so choose, or they can make their own deals to trade for something else. With crowdfunding, a bunch of people put their money into a pool that is then used to fulfill some purpose, such as tooling manufacturers and setting up supply lines to produce a phone.

This does not require a middleman, and in fact the exact same model is used to start practically every corporate partnership: Several individuals pool their resources to fulfill some goal... Perhaps one guy rents the storefront, another buys the supplies, and a third handles the paperwork, resulting in a 3-person partnership to run a store. The only difference is that now there are several middlemen (Kickstarter and IndieGoGo being two) who will take a small commission to connect thousands of investors with the managers. The model is still the same: One guy handles paperwork, one guy arranges for suppliers, and 40,000 other investors chip in cash.

The "trinket" they receive is the return on their investment. Perhaps it's a phone, or their name on a satellite, or even just the personal satisfaction of seeing something made. These are not new deals. Prior to crowdfunding, patrons would simply pay artists out of their own pocket to produce works, or gather together in groups (such as the Lions Club, or Rotary, or various church groups) to pay for something they couldn't afford on their own.

There is absolutely no requirement that an investment's goal be to make more money. An investment is merely a resource put towards any particular goal.

Yeah, ok, "risk capital to make bank" hasn't been capitalism since the first limited liability corporation was set up, but at least there was some semblance of risk.

That's exactly what the limited libility leaves at risk: what's been invested, and nothing more. The limit on liability means that the company is its own legal entity, and if it's the target of a lawsuit, the owners' separate personal resources aren't at risk. The invested capital is still at risk, but the investor isn't required to be 100% at risk. If an airplane manufacturer goes bankrupt, the owner isn't still contractually obligated to fulfill orders for planes.

Re:Too much bullshit from Canonical

[millhouse513]

and I have both a Dell AND Asus with Ubuntu on them -- they work fine.

Re:Too much bullshit from Canonical

[kesuki]

i noticed alienware has the choice of ubuntu -- alienware is owned by dell and is their 'gaming' model line http://www.dell.com/us/p/alienware-x51-r2/pd.aspx

Re:Too much bullshit from Canonical

[cervesaebraciator]

He changes his complaint above to this:

"Dell announced plans today to offer Ubuntu Linux 7.04 preinstalled on "select consumer products." Dell has at various times offered some overpriced Linux options, but never a "budget" one. Dell currently offers a Ubuntu laptop for developers. [dell.com] It costs $1549 and will ship Real Soon Now. The same machine is available now with Windows [dell.com] for $999.

I'm responding to your comment on a budget Dell desktop that came with Ubuntu preinstalled. I used to have a Ubuntu netbook from Dell until an incident involving the overzealous use of a soldering iron...

Re:Too much bullshit from Canonical

[cervesaebraciator]

I'm not sure why you're blaming Canonical [...]

Oh, you didn't get the memo. Since Bill the Borg disappeared from /. we've moved on from hating on Micro$oft. We're supposed to hate on Canonical now. So whether or not it's their fault, blame anonical.

Re:Too much bullshit from Canonical

[Anonymous Coward]

I like how they have an $80,000 option, and then want an additional $100 for shipping. Really we just gave you 80k and you want extra to ship it??

  I think the crowd funding is great for projects where the person would have no way to fund the project on their own, but these private for profit businesses doing this is ridiculous, they want no risk but all the profit and glory.

I know double fine did it(I even supported it) but at least you can see where they are going with not going with a publisher

Did you not fully comprehend that sentence, where they said that shipping was free for that package except for destinations outside the US and UK? $100 is a mere .12% of $80,000 but at the same time it is pretty damn cheap to ship 100 phones internationally (when tariffs and other requirements will be in the thousands).

Re:Too much bullshit from Canonical

[Anonymous Coward]

To be fair, there was an Ubuntu distro on the dell mini 10...

Re:Too much bullshit from Canonical

[Anonymous Coward]

Major OEMs (HP, Dell, etc) ship millions of computers with Ubuntu every year. The shipments are mostly to emerging markets (China, India...), which is why you don't see many machines in western (read: slashdot-reading) countries.

Source: I am affiliated with that effort

Re:Too much bullshit from Canonical

[bluefoxlucid]

You're thinking people are capitalists. They're socialists. America is a socialism-communism political atmosphere. It's like how we like fucking and see stuff about teachers giving 16 year olds blowjobs and go "DAMN I wish my teachers were like that in high school!", but we tell our post-pubescent young adults they need to stay virgins and should behave and not get naked or look at porn. It's dirty and naughty and wrong, and we tell everyone that... while demanding more public social services.

Re:Too much bullshit from Canonical

[bluefoxlucid]

Yes, he has 0.5 billions of dollars.

Re:Too much bullshit from Canonical

[F.Ultra]

Did you miss that the $80000 option was for 100 units which actually is a lower price per unit, so why should you also get free shipping when you already get a better price?

Re:Too much bullshit from Canonical

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know in the USA but here (China) most Dell pro series like Latitude are delivered with Ubuntu, except if you specifically ask for a Windows. They even come with a nice Ubuntu "thick" sticker in place of the usual Windows one.

Re:Too much bullshit from Canonical

[styrotech]

I didn't get the memo either. Are we still allowed to hate Larry Ellison?

Re:Too much bullshit from Canonical

[datavirtue]

With crowdfunding, a bunch of people put their money into a pool that is then used to...

I can't wait till these people grow up. Is this like some hippie-commune resurgence or something? This is so passé and a waste of time. I guess it makes sense if it is something that people actually want. Then again if people wanted it then there would be capital chasing the opportunity.

Re:Too much bullshit from Canonical

[datavirtue]

I used to have a Ubuntu netbook from Dell until an incident involving the overzealous use of a soldering iron...

Do tell.

Re:Too much bullshit from Canonical

[datavirtue]

Just look at him...that's your answer.

Re:Too much bullshit from Canonical

[cervesaebraciator]

Me paenitet. Whatever that comment prompted you to imagine is likely far more interesting than the actual story.

Re:Too much bullshit from Canonical

[readingaccount]

The only reason I could see Dell doing that in China is because it reduces the cost of the machine even further, and they assume people will format it and put a pirated version of Windows on it anyway, so there's no point bundling it for greater cost. Very few are likely to keep using the pre-installed Ubuntu and miss out on stuff like MS Office and things that the rest of the fucking world expect to be able to do.

Re:Too much bullshit from Canonical

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but Ellison actually thrives on the hatred from lesser beings like us so it's just better to ignore him.

Re:Too much bullshit from Canonical

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed. How can't these poor Chinese Barbarians miss the rectal fuck by Mr Billo and by Mr Stevo ! Barbarians don't understand the value of freedom and shertainly want all the blink-blink of Windoofs, ifooons and Androitz. Glass beads for barbarians - a tried and proven strategy of Anglosaxon communication with other peoples !

Re:Too much bullshit from Canonical

[Anonymous Coward]

With capitalist information and communication technology, THERE IS A BACKDOOR SURE AS HELL FOR THE 1% TO CONTROL THE 99%. That's the fucking difference to FOSS software. Now, with Mr Suckworth, I am not sure what kind of animal he is.

Re:Too much bullshit from Canonical

[LavouraArcaica]

here in brazil is common dell's with ubuntu preloaded.

Re:Too much bullshit from Canonical

[ruemere]

Damn. I wish I could you mod you up Informative.

Regards,
Ruemere

Re:Too much bullshit from Canonical

[Anonymous Coward]

America is a socialism-communism political atmosphere.

You're batshit crazy if you believe that.

Re:Too much bullshit from Canonical

[Anonymous Coward]

It can be hard to gauge demand, especially for niche products, this is where crowdsourcing excels, it allows the manufacture of niche products to be funded without investors demanding large markups to offset the risk they are taking, and it also guarantees sales (from the backers) which just polling prospective buyers doesn't.

Crowdsourcing isn't appropriate for everything, but it has its place.

Re:Too much bullshit from Canonical

[readingaccount]

What's the point of freedom if you can't do your job which may well require using propritary software that just so happens to assist in performing said job?

Why the fuck are we even using computers for anyway? For the sake of it? Or because they are tools to perform a task? Fuck you guys are stupid sometimes.

Re:Too much bullshit from Canonical

[sourcerror]

Except with crowdsourcing the backers aren't investors, but donators. They don't get any equity in the company. It would have been in fact illegal to do so. This might change in the near future.

http://www.salon.com/2012/12/28/equity_crowdfunding_waits_on_the_sec/

Re:Too much bullshit from Canonical

[Anonymous Coward]

if people wanted it then there would be capital chasing the opportunity.

There are $4 million invested so far, and growing.

How about no.

[Anonymous Coward]

Go ask Amazon...

Basic math

[Sarten-X]

In order to meet the target, they have to sell at least 38096 of those 40,000 phones after the first day, and 1906 on the first. They have to sell at least 39,507 of them to meet their goal, if they're all at the higher price.

Ambitious goals.

Re:Basic math

[Sarten-X]

1904 on the first day, I mean.

Re:Basic math

[Anonymous Coward]

You might want to revisit elementary school and work on your basic math skills.

Re:Basic math

[Sarten-X]

From the sell-them-all scenario: 38096 * $810 + 1904 * $600 = $32,000,160. Selling one more at the $600 level means they miss their goal.

From the sell-as-few-as-possible scenario: 39507 * $810 = $32,000,670. They can only have 493 phones unsold at the end of the campaign for it to meet the goal.

With regards to the necessary correction, I need to work on my remembering-numbers-while-switching-tabs skills.

Re:Basic math

[Luyseyal]

With regards to the necessary correction, I need to work on my remembering-numbers-while-switching-tabs skills.

Yeah. Since I've got a 20" monitor, I've started opening two browser windows for this very reason. Copy/paste is nice but sometimes it's better to have information side-by-side in a similar size.

I've tried using it with a second screen (the laptop screen) but it is just too tiny for side-by-side comparisons.

-l

/insert comment about only-having-a-13"-laptop-screen-you-insensitive-clod here

Re:Basic math

[Anonymous Coward]

FWIW, 1975 have already been claimed at the $600 price, and another 34 generous folks have claimed them at the $830 price

Re:Basic math

[Anonymous Coward]

They are selling the first 50 for 10k each. also they can sell an unlimited amount of 20$ warm fuzzies.

Re:Basic math

[gbjbaanb]

still more than Windows Phone 8 managed.... :)

Don't need

[Adult film producer]

Just bought a Z10 and I'm loving it. Everything that a smart phone should be and the battery life kicks ass. If I wasn't so paranoid about erased data being recovered I would probably sell my S3... so it'll sit on the shelf with the other antiquated hard drives and peripherals.

Re:Don't need

[Nerdfest]

If you use the built-in data encrypt option it will wipe your data quite thoroughly. You internal SD card is also an EXT based file syste, and you can wipe it using a USB link to a Linux machine if you wish.

Re:Don't need

[bluefoxlucid]

Flash it with Cyanogenmod, tell Clockwork to wipe the cache/data partitions, and sell it off. Nobody's going to buy your phone and extract your child pornography.

Re:Don't need

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean it has all the backdoors by NSA and the Canadian TLA built-in ?? Plus it emits all keys on a regular basis for the Saudis and the Indians. Yeah, great device.

Re:Don't need

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for repeating the Police State's Prime Meme "kiddie porn". Suckers like you build your own shackles.

Exclusiveness

[malzfreund]

It seems like a bit of a break with their philosophy. About Ubuntu says "The vision for Ubuntu is part social and part economic: free software, available free of charge to everybody on the same terms." Sure, they're talking about software there but a not exactly affordable phone for $600-810 still feels a bit odd.

Re:Exclusiveness

[Anonymous Coward]

Their announced plans include a low-end phone as well. But launched through a carrier, not targeted to a geek audience on a crowd-funding site.

Canonical's business model.

[Anonymous Coward]

First to head off the Let Me Google That For You people, I want Slashdot user's opinions. Googlng tells me nothing - but some of you may have had direct dealings.

What is Canonical's business model? Yeah, yeah, yeah - it's a billionaire throwing money at something or another. No really. Billionaires DO NOT throw money around in "hopes" of anything.

Money is being made here and I'm not getting it.

Re:Canonical's business model.

[Anonymous Coward]

Shuttlecock aint a billionaire. Never has been. His net worth at its peak was around $575 million.

Re:Canonical's business model.

[Spy Handler]

Did you even click on any of the links? The top result is the Wikipedia page on Canonical.

I will summarize for you: Their business model: selling services. They wanna be like: Red Hat. Profits: none yet, but Shuttleworth says they are getting close to break-even.

"In a Guardian interview in May 2008, Mark Shuttleworth said that the Canonical business model was service provision and explained that Canonical was not yet close to profitability. Canonical also claimed it will wait for the business to turn into a profitable one within another 3 to 5 years. He regarded Canonical as positioning itself as demand for services related to free software rose.[14] This strategy has been compared to Red Hat's business strategies in the 1990s.[15] However, in an early 2009 New York Times article, Shuttleworth said that Canonical's revenue was "creeping" towards $30 million, the company's break-even point.[16]

In 2007, Canonical launched an International online shop selling support services and Ubuntu branded goods; later in 2008 it expanded that with a United States-specific shop designed to reduce shipment times.[17] At the same time, the word Ubuntu was trademarked in connection with clothing and accessories.[18]"

Re:Canonical's business model.

[h4rr4r]

If they would stop doing dumb shit with their server platform they would already be making money. Of course these days even RHEL wants to have a splashscreen instead of a boot you can watch.

Re:Canonical's business model.

[F.Ultra]

What dumb shit do they do with their servers? There is no splash boot on any of my Ubuntu servers (10.04 and 12.04).

Re:Canonical's business model.

[h4rr4r]

Last time we played around with getting service contracts for it we installed 10.04 and it had the splash boot, you could turn it off but that was a pretty bad sign.

It also wanted to install X and a bunch of other horseshit that does not belong on a server. Since then I have played around with the alternate CD, but i am not sure they support that.

Re:Canonical's business model.

[readingaccount]

Wait, who apart from some neckbeards who live in their own universe every suggested you shouldn't install X on a server? There are definite advantages to a GUI for reasons of ease and discoverability and even if you don't use it often, having that functionality immediately available is a lot more useful than not having it at all.

Re:Canonical's business model.

[F.Ultra]

So you didn't actually install the server version but the desktop edition. The server version does not have a boot splash and does not install X (unless you tell it to explicitly).

Re:Canonical's business model.

[h4rr4r]

You can install X applications without full X. Then you run them remotely and X runs on the local machine instead of the server.

Please tell me you just admin windows machines.

Re:Canonical's business model.

[h4rr4r]

Actually the default server CD. The Server alternate does what you are talking about.

Re:Canonical's business model.

[readingaccount]

I USED to admin Windows servers, mainly because I had to for a while (a job's a job). Then I got out of that god-awful business and work as an embedded engineer because it's what I spent ages doing engineering for at college. Figured I'd actually put the degree to use. :)

We use CentOS here. Fowarding X programs is common for some of us, but a lot of other people often request VNC connections so that they can work on the machines remotely like they do with our Windows servers. Who am I to tell them to do things differently?

Re:Canonical's business model.

[F.Ultra]

There has never been an alternative cd for the server edition, it's only the desktop edition that has an alternative.

Re:Canonical's business model.

[h4rr4r]

Well the sysadmin should tell them No. They can install an X server on windows.

Re:Canonical's business model.

[readingaccount]

Aha, but I'm not the sysadmin. Besides, the sysadmin doesn't care. His job (apart from the necessities of keeping the system running) is to ensure people can do their jobs and to help facilitate this goal. If it means people can use VNC sessions similar to Windows' remote desktop, so be it. The best way isn't always the best way - particularly if the goal is still achieved.

1 mil per day?!

[SmartAboutThings]

1 MILLION DOLLARS PER DAY, ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! Anyhow, enought with the screaming, as of now it has 50% of its first day's goal, but I guess it has to do with all the news that have been going around

WANT

[Anonymous Coward]

What's not to love about this? A open source phone on an open hardware platform, with an open design and development process, on a converged OS. If they pull it off, it's the nirvana of phones. And there's no risk to you to contribute and help make it happen. With such an ambitious campaign, if they don't raise they funds it doesn't cost you more than about 5 minutes and 5 clicks. If they do raise the funds, well, Joy!

Re:WANT

[Lunix Nutcase]

Since when is the hardware open? They've stated no such thing. It's going to have proprietary drivers and fitmware like every pther phone.

Re:WANT

[dos1]

If you're interested in open hardware platform, go for GTA04 - http://gta04.org/

Ubuntu for phones project never aimed to create open hardware phone.

Re:WANT

[dstyle5]

What's not to love about this?

Ubuntu

Re:WANT

[Jerry Atrick]

How is the platform Microsoft stole most of the rejected and unloved ideas in Win8 and WP from any kind of nirvana? A company with a canned 'get over it' response to complaints?

Canonical isn't quite the last company I'd want designed a phone but there's not much in it.

Re:WANT

[Lunix Nutcase]

What exactly did Microsoft "steal" from Ubuntu? The entire Metro UI and its live tiles, etc. predates Unity.

Re:WANT

[h4rr4r]

The specs on that thing are a total joke.
It might have been interesting 3 years ago.

I want super phone specs and FOSS drivers. Preferably in the mainline kernel.

Re:WANT

[dos1]

Then do it.

GTA04 is as far as you can get without funding development of your own device.

Re:WANT

[F.Ultra]

So the fastest available multi-core processor, 4GB RAM and 128GB storage was available on phones in 2010? So the fastest processor in 2013 is slower than the fastest processor back in 2010?

Re:WANT

[h4rr4r]

In 2010 that would not have been the fastest processor either. The specs were ho hum even then.

I believe the GP was suggesting it today.

Re:WANT

[F.Ultra]

The Samsung Galaxy S which was a flagship model was released this time in 2010 and it had a single core 1Ghz CPU with 512MB RAM and 16GB storage. Still GP claims that 4GM RAM, 128GB storage and "the fastest multi core processor made in 2013" would be less specs than something available in 2010??

Re:WANT

[F.Ultra]

Sorry, I for some reason didn't understand that your comment was regarding the GTA04, I assumed that you where talking about the Ubuntu Edge... Well so much for making an ass out of me...

No keyboard? No Thanks!

[OrangeTide]

It's not a good form factor like the Psion Revo or HP 200LX. I don 't think I really want another smartphone, I barely use the three that I have.

Whoever gets there first...

[Anonymous Coward]

I have been waiting for Microsoft to do this very thing with Windows on an x86 "phone" device. I still run windows mobile 6.5 which is the closest thing to the Ubuntu goal. If Ubuntu gets there before Microsoft, I will adopt Linux on my phone and not look back.

Simply stated, I want a native code development environment and I want complete interchangeability between desktop and mobile environments.

I'm very excited about this product!!!

Only 40000?

[Anonymous Coward]

That means that there will be a rather limited user base, so there will be quite limited interest in developing applications for this thing. And that, in contrast, means that it will be mostly interesting to people who are eager to develop applications for their own use, but not interested in marketing them.

If they want this thing to fly, announcing right away that they are killing the project after initial delivery seems quite silly.

Re:Only 40000?

[Anonymous Coward]

The 40,000 limit is only for this particular, supposedly cutting-edge hardware, they do intend to get the Ubuntu OS adopted by other manufacturers. They aren't getting any profit from this crowdfunding campaign, so it's fair to guess that this campaign is mostly a marketing stunt to help get the Ubuntu Phone OS out there.

Crowdfunding??

[DogDude]

Seriously? Now, private, for-profit companies are just asking people for cash? What kind of balls does it take to do that? And, somewhat related, what kind of idiot would give them money?

Re:Crowdfunding??

[Microlith]

Yeah, how dare companies attempt to crowd source things! Damn, I just put up $200 to a Japanese animation studio so they could extend a sequel to a short they did, what madness is this!? Haven't people realized that rather than showing support for things they like and want, they should just shut up and take what's given to them?

Obviously, we're all supposed to just buy whatever Android, iOS, or Windows Phone is on the market. Choice? What nonsense!

Re:Crowdfunding??

[Anonymous Coward]

Kickstarter was the proof of concept for that model. Now if you have a startup company you just beg online for free money, and you have no investors breathing down your neck for 25% annual returns. People really have become stupid enough to just give money to already-wealthy developers.

Re:Crowdfunding??

[charles2678]

Seriously? Now, private, for-profit companies are just asking people for cash? What kind of balls does it take to do that? And, somewhat related, what kind of idiot would give them money?

Someone who wants to live in a world where the product they're proposing to build exists, I'd expect?

Re:Crowdfunding??

[Microlith]

Now if you have a startup company you just beg online for free money, and you have no investors breathing down your neck for 25% annual returns.

Because every company needs investors, right? Why can't those investors just be the first customers looking to get in early? How is this a bad thing?

People really have become stupid enough to just give money to already-wealthy developers.

What the fuck does this matter? Isn't something like this a perfect gauge for early-adopter interest?

Re:Crowdfunding??

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see how this is much different from pre-ordering the latest console, except more lag time between cash payout and getting your device. The only question would be whether or not you get a refund if they don't meet their funding goal.

Re:Crowdfunding??

[DogDude]

Brilliant! You paid for their market research for them! You're so smart! Congratulations on your gift! I'm sure that one of the executives of the company really appreciates it! Want to give my company some money, too?

Re:Crowdfunding??

[DogDude]

Those of us with some sense of fiscal sanity generally call that "investing". Crowdsourcing is unrelated to investing.

Re:Crowdfunding??

[DogDude]

Because every company needs investors, right? Why can't those investors just be the first customers looking to get in early? How is this a bad thing?

It's only bad for the people dumb enough to give somebody money with no strings attached and call it "investing".

Re:Crowdfunding??

[taz346]

Yes, unbelievable, isn't it? It's like when I went online to order a new laptop a few weeks ago - the private, for-profit company there also asked me for money. The nerve.

Re:Crowdfunding??

[Anonymous Coward]

you mad bro?

Re:Crowdfunding??

[DogDude]

You "purchased" an item. By giving them money for the laptop, they have a legal obligation to give you a laptop. Crowdsourcing is not "purchasing" anything. It's a donation, in the hopes that whoever you donated the money to will give you something in return.

I find it shocking that a web site (this one) with so many smart people having discussions can, at the same time, also be host to so many people who don't understand the basics about how money works. We've got crowdsourcing, bitcoin...

Re:Crowdfunding??

[Anonymous Coward]

Those of us with some sense of fiscal sanity generally call that "investing". Crowdsourcing is unrelated to investing.

Investing? Fiscal sanity? Hah! I guess everyone want a lot of Scandinavia these days then, since they keep putting their money into our state-obligations.

Nothing to do with making money by doing diddelysquat, nope, not at all...

Re:Crowdfunding??

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, he should support Ubuntu and Open Sores until he is totally broke. The tens of millions he has already given isn't enough!

Re:Crowdfunding??

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone sounds mad. I guess all those movies you saw as a kid with "investment bankers" partying all the time inspired you to become something that ended up being worthless?

Re:Crowdfunding??

[Microlith]

You paid for their market research for them! You're so smart!

And in the end I'll get a product! Holy shit, it's like there's an actual transaction taking place!

Congratulations on your gift!

But it's not a gift!

Want to give my company some money, too?

Are you offering something in return? Somehow I doubt it!

Re:Crowdfunding??

[gnupun]

Yeah, but unlike most forms of capital sources, crowdfunding is interest free and risk-free (to the builder)

If he invested his own funds, there's a chance the project might fail and he would lose his hard-earned money.

If he tried getting the money from a bank, they would ask for a collateral and charge a big interest rate

Asking $32 mill from angel investors or venture capitalists would require him to sign 10% - 30% (guess) of the company to the investors.

Given the options above, the most profitable and least risky choice of capital is crowdfunding. As usual, dumb/ignorant people are being taken for a ride. These crowd-funding sites should give control of 2% to 5% of the company to the people who seeded the company.

Re:Crowdfunding??

[DogDude]

No, it's not like an actual transaction. In an actual transaction, there's an agreement. This is just a gift. A gift is when one party gives something to the other party without anything expected in return. Do you really not know this...?

Re:Crowdfunding??

[binarylarry]

Isn't the ride why they contribute in the first place?

I doubt many people contribute to make a profit.

Re:Crowdfunding??

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think you know how crowd funding works.

Re:Crowdfunding??

[evilviper]

Haven't people realized that rather than showing support for things they like and want, they should just shut up and take what's given to them?

Except with crowd funding, you don't find out if you "like and want" the product until AFTER you've spent your money on it, when it's too late. You're just throwing money at a name...

With crowd funding, there's no motivation to make a good product, just one that barely meets the promised specifications, while spending as little of that advance money as possible.

The only places crowd funding make sense is where the traditional investment or bank loan options don't work... Products with a very small following that will only barely turn a profit NEED crowd funding to reduce the risk of a failure.

Re:Crowdfunding??

[Microlith]

A gift is when one party gives something to the other party without anything expected in return.

Legally it isn't even a gift, as it's taxed at disbursement time.

I expect something in return. I am not guaranteed to get it. And if I don't, then I will keep that in mind if they ever try to do another kickstarter type project. It's an investment in whatever the person who started the drive is pitching, and the ultimate cost is in their reputation. Succeed and your reputation looks good, fail and people will question your future efforts.

In the meantime, I have backed many projects that have succeeded. And I'm happy to do so, as it lets things with very narrow target audiences actually come to fruition.

Re:Crowdfunding??

[MrEricSir]

Seriously? Now, private, for-profit companies are just asking people for cash? What kind of balls does it take to do that? And, somewhat related, what kind of idiot would give them money?

Private, for-profit companies have been doing pre-orders for years. There's nothing new here.

Re:Crowdfunding??

[Microlith]

You're just throwing money at a name

And they are putting their reputation on the line.

With crowd funding, there's no motivation to make a good product, just one that barely meets the promised specifications, while spending as little of that advance money as possible.

Or sometimes the product is already done and designed, but the funding will allow for addition of a few features and an actual production run. If they can meet what they promise and still show a profit, well, good for them I suppose.

The only places crowd funding make sense is where the traditional investment or bank loan options don't work... Products with a very small following that will only barely turn a profit NEED crowd funding to reduce the risk of a failure.

Which could easily be the vast majority. And even this handset thing could be a flop. They may never even go forward with it if the indiegogo fails. IMO, it's a great way to let early adopters throw their hat into the ring and let Canonical go through the process once before investing big into it.

Re:Crowdfunding??

[Microlith]

Those of us with some sense of fiscal sanity generally call that "investing".

As an individual, I cannot invest in that manner. I can only hope that my interests align with the investors at some point and I get what I want. But rarely does that ever actually happen.

Crowdsourcing is unrelated to investing.

Crowdfunding is unrelated to investing, but it does let me push towards the goal of getting what I want when all the investors turn it away because the return on investment isn't a percentage they approve of.

Re:Crowdfunding??

[Sark666]

"Holy shit, it's like there's an actual transaction taking place!"

I have no points, but that's friggin funny.

Thanks for the laugh.

Re:Crowdfunding??

[DogDude]

A pre-order is very different from a donation.

Re:Crowdfunding??

[datavirtue]

Whoa, you don't get the money back if the product doesn't ship? Now I'm really laughing.

Re:Crowdfunding??

[MrEricSir]

Did you actually look at the IndieGoGo page? A few people are throwing free cash at a millionare's company, sure. But most of them are pre-orders.

Re:Crowdfunding??

[Anonymous Coward]

They may never go forward with it even in if the indiegogo is a success!! By going through Indiegogo, Canonical has chosen a method of funding that requires absolutely nothing out of them. Just go look at the IGG TOS. For all we know, the Edge could be nothing more than a render. But let's say they get their money, and after 6 or 8 months of "trying really their absolute bestiest" they just can't bring it to market. Or can't source the components. Or whatever else. The backers? THEY GET NOTHING. It's been said a million times before, but IGG IS NOT A STORE. If 32m goes down the memory hole, well, thanks for supporting us in our most pioneering way of getting money for nothing.

Re:Crowdfunding??

[Adult film producer]

Stop your bitching.. you get a keychain and a t-shirt if you donate!

Re:Crowdfunding??

[readingaccount]

There is such a thing as too much choice, particularly for mobile platforms. Too many differing options tends to put more work on the app developer, which tends to push them towards pursuing only the top one or two platforms for reasons of practicality and feasibility. If Windows Phone is having trouble being relevant despite Microsoft's significantly greater influence and financial resources compared to Canonical, imagine how tough it will be for Ubuntu Phone.

Besides, I kinda want to see Canonical fail for all their arrogance at thinking they're the next Apple and almost ruining the desktop Linux landscape with their shitty design decisions.

Re:Crowdfunding??

[taz346]

Actually they are placing a $600 bet that they'll get a product in return that will be the envy of all their friends and will also be a really nice smartphone that's also a really nice full-fledged computer. People place bets much larger than that thousands of times a day in Vegas, where the odds that they'll win aren't nearly so good. Heck, people place bets much larger than that thousands of times a day on all kinds of investment opportunities. It's their $600 and they're taking a chance with it. There's nothing new at all about people spending their money that way.

Re:Crowdfunding??

[Anonymous Coward]

Nor is there anything wrong to berate "those people" for making such a silly bet. Personally, I think you're wrong about the odds. Casino odds are probably better. At the least you'd get drinks and some snacks out of it (and a view of the blackjack girl's low top).

Re:Crowdfunding??

[cduffy]

Eh? Investing makes sense when you want a return more than you care about the means by which it's derived. Crowdsourcing makes sense when you want a product to exist more than you care about a return -- it's useful for projects which simply won't generate a return, where the end result of the project (the product, media, &c being generated) is the goal in and of itself. They're different things, and one can reasonably choose either of them depending on their goals.

I don't know where you get the idea that anyone conflates the two.

Re:Crowdfunding??

[Anonymous Coward]

A gift is when one party gives something to the other party without anything expected in return.

Not always. There are some cultures where it is expected that you give a gift in return when someone gives you a gift.

Re:Crowdfunding??

[petermgreen]

The question is whether placing a "pledge" in a crowdfunding campain and then having the campaign succeed is a pre-order or a donation.

Kickstarter now have the following in their terms (iirc they didn't initially)

"Project Creators are required to fulfill all rewards of their successful fundraising campaigns or refund any Backer whose reward they do not or cannot fulfill."

Indigogo has a similar statement

"You agree:
      1. All Perks must be lawful and otherwise comply with this Agreement.
      2. To fulfill all Perks and to respond promptly to all questions and comments regarding Perks. If you are unable to fulfill a Perk, you will work with the Contributor(s) to reach a mutually satisfactory resolution which may include, without limitation, issuing a refund promptly."

So it seems pretty clear to me that on the major crowdfunding sites making a pledge, selecting a reward and having that pledge accepted into a successful campaign is a pre-order not a donation.

Introducing the new Slashdot Phone!

[Anonymous Coward]

Get hourly updates featuring
-Vague laws misinterpreted by engineers to be threats to privacy/civil liberties
-The latest release of every obscure Linux distro and its shortcomings compared to 10 other distros
-Factually spurious articles about the death of the IT industry.
-Philosophical flame wars about the validity of alternative energy/electric cars
-Mental masturbation regarding drones/macs/climate change
-Hypothetical discussions of Rasberry Pi created by Arduino driven 3-D printers purchased with BitCoins.
-Windows 8 trolling

Fully compatible with
¦Android
¦BlackBerry 10
¦iOS
¦Nokia Asha
¦Sailfish OS
¦Windows Phone
¦Windows RT
¦Bada
¦BlackBerry OS
¦Grid OS
¦Linux
¦Mer
¦S40
¦Brew
¦SHR
¦Symbian
¦webOS
¦Tizen
¦FireFox Fone

*Unicode support included in a future update

Re:Introducing the new Slashdot Phone!

[GovCheese]

Can I get an app that generates car analogies?

Re:Introducing the new Slashdot Phone!

[Anonymous Coward]

In Soviet Russia, car analogies generate app

Capitalism in the 21st Century

[Anonymous Coward]

Welcome to Capitalism in the 21st Century: socialize risks, privatize profits (hey, it worked for many US companies in 2008).

This opinion (mine) applies to all crowdfunded projects, but this one takes it further.

Paying 600 quid for a day-1 release of an unproved device is nuts!!! Not even the most rabid Ubuntu fanboy would shell out that kind of dough. Shuttleworth needs to understand that Ubuntu != Apple.

The website

[CrAlt]

Why don't they do a fundraiser to hire someone to secure their website?

If they can't get that right then how do they plan on making a secure smartphone?

Looks nice but bridges burnt?

[Duncan J Murray]

The problem is that the 'enthusiasts' who would be contributing to this have just recently had several slaps to the face from Canonical in the form of window buttons, unity, unity & unity. And amazon shopping lenses. 'This is not a democracy' is still rings in the ears. Now Canonical realise that they need the enthusiasts, who's toes they stepped on, to help with this venture into the mobile space.

To be honest, I hope they succeed. I think the concept of a phone that doubles as a desktop could very well be the future of the desktop computer for many people. The hardware also looks very nice (which is a necessity to tempt anyone off android/ios) - I agree with Shuttleworth that mobile screen resolution is getting out of hand, and I'd much rather the colourful OLED displays than the ridiculously high res LCDs (which then look laggy because the graphics can't keep up - see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmywUhu2Pus) and a sapphire glass screen sounds interesting (though will it be as strong as gorilla glass - I doubt it).

I wonder how many of us would have paid up if Nokia had done this with the N950?

Re:Looks nice but bridges burnt?

[Rich0]

a sapphire glass screen sounds interesting (though will it be as strong as gorilla glass - I doubt it)

Depends on your definition of "strong." If you're going to drop your phone and have it impact a hard surface, then the gorilla glass is probably superior. If you're going to stick the phone in your pocket next to your keys, the sapphire will be FAR superior, unless you have a diamond-studded keychain. Sapphire is very difficult to scratch due to its hardness.

Re:Looks nice but bridges burnt?

[briancox2]

And yet, within less than 12 hours, they've hit 3/4 of a million US dollars. Watching them over a 10 minute period, after this story went live on Slashdot, they've gone from $650,000 to $750,000. I think the enthusiasts are onboard.

Keep in mind that the enthusiasts for this project go beyond the Ubuntu Desktop OS enthusiasts. I am a dedicated Ubuntu Desktop OS hater. I'm a Linux Mint guy myself. But I want to see a pure Linux desktop OS succeed on mobile, because it opens the door for others to follow. Rooting your Ubuntu Phone could create a massive amount of ROM flashing options.

The phone that launches a full desktop when docked (and has 128 GB of storage!) is a game changer in the mobile market. So, fanbois of any stripe can be an enthusiast for this project.

Re:Looks nice but bridges burnt?

[h4rr4r]

Keys will not scratch a decent smartphone anyway. They are made of very soft metal. Gorilla glass is pretty brittle too. Harder than sand is what we need.

Re:Looks nice but bridges burnt?

[Duncan J Murray]

I will admit that if I see anyone with one of these Ubuntu phones, I'm going to be quite a smidgen jealous!

D

Re:Looks nice but bridges burnt?

[pspahn]

The phone that launches a full desktop when docked (and has 128 GB of storage!) is a game changer in the mobile market.

I don't know about it being a game changer, but it might.

There's been so many tech toys that have features that "will become a game changer" that I'm afraid all this will do will introduce a potentially useful new feature that nobody ever uses, thus stagnating like so many before it.

Think about it, how many devices with "game changing" features have you owned where that feature was nothing more than a rushed out, underdeveloped bullet point used by marketing?

I see lots of TV ads showing hip kids bumping their phones together to share whatever it is they're sharing, but all I see in the real world are people with their faces glued to their phones with no intention of talking to anyone else around them.

Re:Looks nice but bridges burnt?

[readingaccount]

No disrespect to yourself (nothing wrong with being enthusiastic about something), but if this phone is released the fanboys will go crazy, saying this is the end of Apple/Microsoft like they do every time a new version of Ubuntu is released (and nothing happens, not even with Windows 8 giving them plenty of ammo).

Also, why the hell is this even happening? Doesn't Canonical have any money put away for R&D purposes? Or are they still yet to turn a profit? Shuttleworth is rich - if he can't even turn a profit with Linux and doesn't want to fund the research himself (or indeed, can't find investors willing to contribute, which might be the reason this is happening in the first place), then fuck him. He bet on the wrong horse.

Re:Looks nice but bridges burnt?

[Stephan Lehmke]

Uh, they already have a prototype built you know... The funding is just for the actual mass production. Or so they say.

Free as in... um...

[Anonymous Coward]

Free as in $32 million, huh? Yeah... I have a feeling that's $32,000,000 destined to disappear into the Ethernet.

Re:Free as in... um...

[Anonymous Coward]

No kidding. They're going to buy an already-available hardware platform from one of the big manufacturers like LG or Samsung and put their O/S on it, and you'll happily pay EIGHT HUNDRED DOLLARS for the "privilege" of owning something so exclusive and rare.

Puh-leeze.

Re:Free as in... um...

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering the cost of an unsubsidized halo phone, a 600$ vapor phone is not too bad.

No thanks Gnome

[danknight48]

Quote from http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/ubuntu-edge
"For a phone to run a full desktop OS, it must have the raw power of a PC. We’ll choose the fastest available multi-core processor, at least 4GB of RAM and a massive 128GB of storage."

Instead of coding Gnome with efficiency in mind, or, any common sense. Just put the fastest parts you can in a phone to hide its terrible code and performance?

Yeah, honestly, what a joke this is.
Whats wrong with android? Nothing!
Gnome+Ubuntu mobile will just be a slower/buggier/bloater version of android, which is already near-perfect.

$32 million to make this happen, best of luck. If it succeeds, it will just confirm the world is mostly full of idiots.

Re:No thanks Gnome

[h4rr4r]

There is a lot wrong with android.
1. No good window managers, this means tiling and layering
2. Sudo not built in
3. Lack of normal linux desktop, including X. So I have to use VNC to get normal linux apps to display.
4. lack of decent package management. This means repositories and debs/rpms. This means being able to support dependencies.

Re:No thanks Gnome

[F.Ultra]

Gnome? Last I heard they are porting Unity to Qt+

Re:No thanks Gnome

[readingaccount]

Sounds like you're trying to work outside of how Android is designed as opposed to working within the system. I'm not even talking about a walled garden at this point - Android works in a particular way, just like Ubuntu works in a particular way. Trying to use Linux apps designed for a desktop interface instead of just using the Android-equivalent apps seems to be missing the point. Not to mention increased stress for no real gain.

Re:No thanks Gnome

[gl4ss]

you could run a normal desktop inside android.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=au.com.darkside.XServer and others.

you could also install debian inside android.. ubuntu has been pushing in speech of having same apps run both in desktop and phone mode though.

Re:No thanks Gnome

[h4rr4r]

No real gain?
Having the hundreds of thousands of applications available is no real gain?

The entire point is to be able to hook up an external monitor and use it as a desktop. At that point you want a desktop interface.

Re:No thanks Gnome

[Anonymous Coward]

2. Sudo not built in

What makes you think this is "wrong"? Instead what is wrong is `su` isn't built in.

Re:No thanks Gnome

[readingaccount]

People are porting traditional Linux applications to Android at a very rapid rate. You can even get Octave working on Android now through the store. But Android is NOT A DESKTOP OS and it seems more trouble than it's worth to try to force it to be one. Better to just use Windows or a Linux distro on a compatible touch device if that's your goal.

Re:No thanks Gnome

[h4rr4r]

My goal is to have one computer running multiple interfaces. So when docked I want normal desktop linux, when in phone mode I want android.

Re:No thanks Gnome

[readingaccount]

Well the only company right now who seems to be interested in that idea right now is Canonical, but I don't have much faith with them as they've yet to turn a profit (and so don't have much in the way of proven business capabilities to rely on).

Having said that, the idea of a phone being able to turn into a desktop via a dock is probably going to increase in popularity so it wouldn't surprise me to see Android eventually take on that ability. Just not yet.

wrong means of funding

[nimbius]

crowdsourcing implies you're enticing me with a service or product i want that i dont have. iphone, ipad, android and to a lesser extent windows phone already provide me with a means to consume advertisements and participate in a walled garden. If canonicals intent is to build me a phone i want to use, then it needs to take a few hundred steps back and explain to me how forwarding search information to amazon.com is in any way helpful in respecting or preserving my privacy.

crowdsourcing also implies you cant afford to do this on your own, but you also dont have investment potential in a legitimate public market. To date Canonical has declared 30 million in revenue, which seems to suggest it could entice investors or backers if it went public and issued stock, which is what companies do when they want to expand. starting a kickstarter seems like a cheap pitch by canonical to trick people into paying for something that will just take advantage of them through the same invasive advertising and privacy violation used by three other device manufacturers to varying degrees of success in order to further profit

Re:wrong means of funding

[Anonymous Coward]

Crowdsourcing doesn't "imply" anything, it's actually an ingenious move:

1. It's nice gauge of how much market there is for your product.

2. It's a month-long advertisement for your product that generally gets spread by social media and word of mouth.

3. They hit the 1 million dollar mark in less than 5 hours, nobody has done that before, so it's a crowdfunding-record = more publicity.

But b*tches be all "boohoo they must be poor boohoo make a time-machine and remove amazon-search 'coz I can't be arsed to turn it off boohoo"

Win8 Ubuntu

[Anonymous Coward]

As a long time Linux user, I'd go for Windows 8 on my desktop rather than Ubuntu.

Ubuntu is fine, so long as its on a server and I don't have to interact with the gui. (I've never liked Gnome, and like Unity even less. )

...or not

[AdamWill]

"Canonical has kicked off a crowdfunding campaign to raise $32 million in 30 days to make its own smartphone, called Ubuntu Edge, that can also hook up to a monitor and be used as a PC."

Or, alternatively, some other shit:

"Specifications are subject to change."

So, you know, you could really wind up with anything. The campaign keeps talking about a prototype device, but unless I'm missing it, none of the videos actually shows a working phone - the brief plug-in desktop demo in the 'introducing the hardware' video is using a Nexus of some kind, I think.

So what they apparently have is some bits of code, some shiny renders, and an entirely notional spec sheet.

They just crossed 1M$ already!

[photonic]

They already hit the first million in just a few hours since the story hit the big media. Refreshing a few times, they seem to do about 200k$ per hour right now, so I guess they might easily sell the first 5000 phones at the reduced price. It was probably a good idea to trigger some people into a quick decision by lowering the price on the first day, so that they can realease a press release tomorrow saying they hit their first target. It will be hard to keep the same pace in the next 30 days, though ...

I want one.....

[PeterM from Berkeley]

One of the first things I did with my android smartphone was plug in a USB keyboard and mouse and wonder why they didn't "just work".

Re: sapphire: sapphire is one of the hardest materials there is, I think you could scratch the heck out of 'gorilla glass' with it. Just looked it up, gorilla glass has a "Vickers" hardness of 701 (max) vs. sapphire, at 2300.

That said, sapphire is more brittle and crack-prone, however. Apparently gorilla glass is treated to stop crack propagation. It's quite possible a hammer-blow that wouldn't damage gorilla glass would smash sapphire.

--PM

Re:I want one.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: sapphire: sapphire is one of the hardest materials there is, I think you could scratch the heck out of 'gorilla glass' with it. Just looked it up, gorilla glass has a "Vickers" hardness of 701 (max) vs. sapphire, at 2300.

For this purpose, you want to use a scratch hardness test such as the Mohs scale, rather than the Vickers test, which is a indentation hardness test. Sapphire has a Mohs hardness of 9, while glass is a 7 at best.

Re:I want one.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Having seen plenty of smartphones with cracked screens, I can't say I'm too impressed with gorilla glass's crack-protection.

Does anyone really even want this phone?

[kimgkimg]

Motorola and ASUS already tried the "my phone is my PC" trick with their docking stations. Didn't seem like anyone wanted the concept, so what's different about this go-around?

Re:Does anyone really even want this phone?

[Anonymous Coward]

That its actually a desktop that people use...

$600?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is the hypothetical Ubuntu smartphone worth this much? I can buy a Nexus 4 for half this price and hook it up to an HDMI monitor and a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse.

Re:$600?

[gl4ss]

Is the hypothetical Ubuntu smartphone worth this much? I can buy a Nexus 4 for half this price and hook it up to an HDMI monitor and a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse.

800. it's just a number they pulled out of their hat, really, since they have zero idea what hardware they will actually use and what it will cost. once they have the money(if they get it) they'll go shopping around china for a board + soc provider. even then the timeframe isn't realistic, especially if they promise to buy the fastest multicore arm chips available at that time(or the trick is in the "available", since that might mean higher end samsung/apple type of soc of _today_, since they wouldn't be able to source faster chips in time for may 2014, with the faster production lines churning the chips for sammy and apple, essentially it's not as simple as buying bags of x86 parts - if you'll settle for parts that are two generations old then you can source them far more easier).

there's another a bit similar in hw case going on with jolla. they were floating around comments a year ago that they would have had something for christmas last year since they were essentially buying the whole thing, board+soc. but uh, haven't seen one yet and they're projecting pre-orders to ship maybe for christmas 2013.. admittedly jolla went for not so high end hw and price tag at 400.

Re:$600?

[binarylarry]

Yes but the Ubuntu phone will turn into an Ubuntu Desktop when you plug it in.

Not a phone interface on a giant screen.

Re:$600?

[Anonymous Coward]

40.000 units is not a big deal to produce
But 40.000 830 USD cusmers is
So this way is a great idea that may work well

For average users Ubuntu Phone will be better with ARM64 SoCs
But that will be herewith Edge 2 or Edge 3 if they arrive
Also you will be able to sell this models at second hand markets with very small loses as Ferraris are sold most times for more than they did cost

I'll wait for..

[Anonymous Coward]

... the Mint version.

If Nokia had done it for the N950 I'd've paid

[Phil Urich]

in a fucking heartbeat. But, Nokia had a long-suffering team creating wonderful Linux devices mostly ignored by the rest of the world (not to mention Nokia management). And a lot of those folks are now off at Jolla. Canonical, on the other hand, has no such history of actually shipping quality mobile devices, so it's a far riskier proposition.

Not a bad deal

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't let the form factor fool you. This is not really a phone, but a PC in a phone case.
It sports 4 GB or RAM, multi core processor, 128 GB SSD and probably full HD accelerated 3D graphics.
It's even probably faster than your old laptop, but much more portable. And you can make calls too.
And the price seems about right.

Re:Not a bad deal

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't let the form factor fool you. This is not really a phone, but a PC in a phone case.
It sports 4 GB or RAM, multi core processor, 128 GB SSD and probably full HD accelerated 3D graphics.
It's even probably faster than your old laptop, but much more portable. And you can make calls too.
And the price seems about right.

It's a paper spec sheet, not real hardware. Canonical doesn't have the resources to develop it themselves. They're hoping someone else will do that for them. In other words, they're talking out of their asses, overselling stuff they have no idea how to deliver.

The trainwreck will be fun to watch though! Either that or they'll manage your expectations down after they have your money.

Maybe they should spend money elseware

[Anonymous Coward]

Got this in my inbox today.

Hello,

You are receiving this message because you have an account registered with this address on ubuntuforums.org.

The Ubuntu forums software was compromised by an external attacker. As a result, the attacker has gained access to read your username, email address and an encrypted copy of your password from the forum database.

If you have used this password and email address to authenticate at any other website, you are urged to reset the password on those accounts immediately as the attacker may be able to use the compromised personal information to access these other accounts. It is important to have a distinct password for different accounts.

The ubuntuforums.org website is currently offline and we are working to restore this service. Please take the time to change your ubuntuforums.org account password when service is restored.

We apologize for any inconvenience to the Ubuntu community, thank you for your understanding.

The Canonical Sysadmins.

Maybe instead of wasting time on that gawd-awful Unity interface, bloat-ware on the latest versions, and some pipe-dream phone/tablet that will never corner the market (i.e. learn from microsoft's mistakes) they should spend money on more important things like not having my login leaked or other BS.

I'd rather updated OpenWebOS on good hardware

[SCHecklerX]

A shame what happened there.

Because ubuntu users don't already have a desktop

[polymeris]

Yes, exactly what we need: Another poorly built gadget for people who already own 2 or 3 smartphones, plus at least one desktop and laptop, and want a new overpriced piece of silicon to, after a week or so of post-adquisition rush, collect dust on their shelves and end up in a landfill a year later.  Woohoo!

Brown Cellphone

[Stephen Chadfield]

It will be brown. Nobody will want to buy a brown cellphone.

Re:Brown Cellphone

[Anonymous Coward]

Retard.

Canonical's next campaign

[sfcrazy]

Canonical, the company behind the world’s largest selling smartphones Ubuntu Margin, has launched the biggest ever crowd-funding campaign to hire and pay employees to develop, market and support innovative technologies developed by Canonical through other crowd-funding campaigns. The campaign, called Ubuntu Much, aims to raise an unprecedented $100 million over 30 days on Indiegogo, for a limited salary of its 10 employees who would work exclusively on core Canonical technologies. http://www.damnocrazy.com/canonical-launches-biggest-crowd-funding-campaign-raise-100-million-pay-employees/22

Yeah

[Anonymous Coward]

And deliver all the "intelligence" they need to nail you down in the future:

Director of Cheka

Lenin regarded Felix Dzerzhinsky as a revolutionary hero and appointed him to organize a force to combat internal threats. On 20 December 1917, the Council of People's Commissars officially established the All-Russia Extraordinary Commission to Combat Counter-revolution and Sabotage—usually known as the Cheka (based on the Russian acronym ). Dzerzhinsky became its director. The Cheka received a large number of resources, and became known for ruthlessly pursuing any perceived counterrevolutionary elements. As the Russian Civil War expanded, Dzerzhinsky also began organizing internal security troops to enforce the Cheka's authority.

The Cheka undertook drastic measures during the Russian Civil War. Tens of thousands of political opponents were shot without trial in the basements of prisons and in public places.[17] Dzerzhinsky said: "We represent in ourselves organized terror—this must be said very clearly."[18] and "[The Red Terror involves] the terrorization, arrests and extermination of enemies of the revolution on the basis of their class affiliation or of their pre-revolutionary roles."[19]

In 1922, at the end of the Civil War, the Cheka was renamed as the GPU (State Political Directorate), a section of the NKVD. This did not diminish Dzerzhinsky's power; he was Minister of the Interior, director of the Cheka/GPU/OGPU, Minister for Communications, and director of the Vesenkha (Supreme Council of National Economy) 1921–24.

At his office in Lubyanka, Dzerzhinsky kept a portrait of Rosa Luxemburg on the wall.[20]

Besides his leadership of the Cheka, Dzerhinsky also took on a number of other roles; he led the fight against Typhus in 1918, was Chair of the Commissariat for Internal Affairs from 1919 to 1923, initiated a vast orphanage construction program, chaired the Transport Commissariat, organised the embalming of Lenin's body in 1924 and chaired the Society of Friends of Soviet Cinema.[21]

In Soviet America

[Anonymous Coward]

..People do the spywork themselves.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_%28surveillance_program%29

Director of Cheka

Lenin regarded Felix Dzerzhinsky as a revolutionary hero and appointed him to organize a force to combat internal threats. On 20 December 1917, the Council of People's Commissars officially established the All-Russia Extraordinary Commission to Combat Counter-revolution and Sabotage—usually known as the Cheka (based on the Russian acronym ). Dzerzhinsky became its director. The Cheka received a large number of resources, and became known for ruthlessly pursuing any perceived counterrevolutionary elements. As the Russian Civil War expanded, Dzerzhinsky also began organizing internal security troops to enforce the Cheka's authority.

The Cheka undertook drastic measures during the Russian Civil War. Tens of thousands of political opponents were shot without trial in the basements of prisons and in public places.[17] Dzerzhinsky said: "We represent in ourselves organized terror—this must be said very clearly."[18] and "[The Red Terror involves] the terrorization, arrests and extermination of enemies of the revolution on the basis of their class affiliation or of their pre-revolutionary roles."[19]

In 1922, at the end of the Civil War, the Cheka was renamed as the GPU (State Political Directorate), a section of the NKVD. This did not diminish Dzerzhinsky's power; he was Minister of the Interior, director of the Cheka/GPU/OGPU, Minister for Communications, and director of the Vesenkha (Supreme Council of National Economy) 1921–24.

At his office in Lubyanka, Dzerzhinsky kept a portrait of Rosa Luxemburg on the wall.[20]

Besides his leadership of the Cheka, Dzerhinsky also took on a number of other roles; he led the fight against Typhus in 1918, was Chair of the Commissariat for Internal Affairs from 1919 to 1923, initiated a vast orphanage construction program, chaired the Transport Commissariat, organised the embalming of Lenin's body in 1924 and chaired the Society of Friends of Soviet Cinema.[21]

I still have questions BUT I am tempted

[Anonymous Coward]

For one, I have no need or desire for an Android phone, I got one, a 2nd generation nexus and it suits me fine... I COULD use a Linux phone. A REAL Linux phone that is a REAL PC with REAL PC hardware and capabilities. Simply put, does it have a full terminal, can I run bash scripts, use SSH (both in coming and outgoing) etc etc.

Storage: 128GB internal is nice... but SD cards now come in 124GB varieties. Can its memory be expanded? Because 128GB for a PC ain't much.

Will I be free to compile any program I want on it?

How is the sound, my phone gets the most use as a MP3 player.

I am tempted but I also recently tried to install minitube (regular version via apt-get is obsolete) via the software manager in xubuntu AND it required me to log in to Ubuntu one. Soon enough found a PPA to do it instead but what the fuck? minitube ain't GPL so maybe it is allowed but a login wall in Linux? Come ON! Even MySQL from Oracle allows you to just proceed to the download.

In one day they did 3-4 million, 30 million in 30 days seems not just possible but likely. But will it be a worthy successor to the Nokia N900? It could be, it depends on how far of the deepend Shuttleworth has gone with his Unity idea. I got a working phone thank you very much, I could use a full Linux PC in my pocket. Sell me that.

Thanks, but

[lissnup]

I want someone to crowdfund production of a smart device that can be a phone, or plug into a screen to serve as a desktop, but is also a mesh network node accessible by other units and potentially other devices, under certain conditions. I would also be fine with them deciding to take longer than 30 days, if they would charge less, and make more units. It wouldn't necessarily have to be wafer-thin or satisfy other trendy aesthetics, because battery life and not using conflict minerals would be more important. Is this an impossible dream?

Dell with U. preinstalled : last year...

[Herve5]

OTOH, being abroad the US, here in Europe I patiently waited *one year* for this very same Dell Ubuntu laptop to become available, then the day before I was going to buy, the product disappeared, apparently because the work to homogeneously bring Ubuntu along with adapted drivers etc. had stopped in Dell, and the resulting product was becoming one-year-obsolete now (was delivered with last years's Ubuntu version).
So, indeed I had my money in hand, and the whole thing crashed, although not by Ubuntu's fault...
(I bought a mac, yes. Will retry in a couple of years...)

sudo, su, apt, gcc

[Anonymous Coward]

I am very interested with this project, but will the phone be locked down or will it be open like Ubuntu Desktop OS?
Will Ubuntu Edge have sudo, su, apt, gcc etc. the essentials to make the phone works like a fully functional Desktop PC?
Will Canonical host any apt repos for this OS build?
Without the above, the phone would be pretty useless for me?

Thanks in advance.

Not Rocket Science: expensive but very limited #s

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? only 1250 people can get the base cost phone?? That was stupid. $800 for a phone is starting to get silly.
One can only assume folks are now having to get together to buy the dual pack if they want one. And that Shuttleworth will have to kick in the rest in the coming days.

At this point in time it's an overpriced $700 phone with some possible neat features. Possibly. Only thing I don't see is that they probably need sapphire over the camera lens. Otherwise it looks like nice "possible" specs.