Mint's KDE flavor is very nice already. The only problem with KDE these days is it's original 'too much configurability' issue. Yes, it may be hard to believe, but KDE has actually proven that there can be too much configurabilitty (or at least too much to present routinely to casual users).
People complain about certain aspects of KDE - especially the search indexer, but distros don't have to include it all.
As Chrome gains the ability to run Android apps, a touchscreen will be a must. Not because touch is great on a laptop, but because Android apps would be awful with a trackpad. (actually, everything's awful with a trackpad, but I assume you can plug a mouse into this thing)
The real story is the wave of reflexive paranoia infecting the free software crowd. First it was "systemd is taking over and destroying Linux as we know and love it". Now it's "Google's really evil... well not evil, but we think it could become evil... well, arrogant and forcing us to adopt new technology before we're ready..."
Okay, the "Google's evil and handing over your SSN to advertisers" meme's been around for a while now. But seriously, folks...
You'll see iPhones and Blackberries. But when it's a windows phone, you get a loving full-screen closeup - showing the transition from the Tiles through to the Conttacts app. Or you'll see the SMS app with animated conversations.
I remember when Under The Dome came out, and every other scene someone was holding a Surface or WinPhone up to the camera. If they needed to show someone a photo, you'd see them navigate all the way from the tiles to where the plot wanted them to go. The most obvious and bone-headed product placement ever.
And if they were really smart, they would include tools in there so that existing WIN32 code could be re-purposed for use in jump-starting an app in the new platform-agnostic toolset. Existing WIN32 code is their biggest asset, and from Windows 8 on, they've done their best to piss on it - and the developers that spent years writing it. Big mistake.
The whole 'bloatware subsidizes your computer' meme may be about to be challenged. I assume Lenovo won't suddenly start charging more for their PC's with the bloatware removed - the industry's too competitive for that. So now we have a major PC manufacturer that could really subtract Windows (and/or offer Linux pre-loaded) and show the true price differential. Will it happen - who knows?
So what? It's pretty well established that iOS users have more money on average than Android users - which makes sense, since there are so many inexpensive Android devices available. Still, you either target those users or you don't. Writing for iOS won't reach them. But, just because they're not the most profitable set of users, doesn't mean you can afford to ignore them.
I'd mod you 'funny' if I didn't think you meant it. Android has hundreds of millions of users. Ubuntu probably has a few million (maybe tens of millions). Other distros, even fewer. If numbers mean anything, it should be obvious which of these accounts for "Linux's success"?
Linux fragmentation is good in the sense that it's openness has allowed it to usher in whole new device categories (TiVo, Chromecast, Raspberry, home NAS boxes, etc). The one thing that Linux fragmentation has not helped is desktop adoption and especially 3rd party application development, which is still practically non-existent. And I use Linux as my primary desktop, so this isn't some uninformed rant.
I say if rendering their cash cows 'kind of fragile' causes them to become a different company, render away. No sense stopping now, when they're just beginning to change. Believe me, if they had a way of locking developers down to Metro, they'd do it.
I could see a day where Intel stopped manufacturing 'desktop' chips. Not because of their high heat output, but because the desktop market became no longer a specific profit center that they couldn't serve with their laptop chips. Of course, since Intel will still make server-class chips, I guess anybody wanting to build a high power desktop could use those. That is, until ARM takes over as a server architecture.
Your loaded use of "Gay agenda", aside, you're actually right. The writer of this movie sees it as a much needed apology to a brilliant man (are you denying that?) who made an enormous contribution to the war effort (are you denying that?) that happend to contain the seeds of the computer revolution we now all take for granted (are you denying that?). And after all that was persecuted by his government and essentially driven to suicide. Apologies are probably in order, no?
So what's the Gay agenda here - not to torture people for who they are?
The original article bemoans the way technology is (or is not) presented in the film. And it has a point - but it's beside the point. Yes, this film was made to teach us some history (more accurate, one might argue, than the history in "American Sniper"), but mostly to elevate a man who deeply deserves to be known and appreciated. And there was some interesting history in there anyway - about the weak link in the German messages that allowed the code to be broken, and about the way the army sometimes held back on what it had intercepted (at the cost of lives) in order to keep secret what they knew. It just wasn't history of technology. Sorry - different film.
I wonder if you thought stimulus was a dirty word back in 2009 when your 401K had lost 30% of its 'value'. I'll agree that a society basing its future security on 401K's heavily invested in the rigged US stock market is a nasty way to gain allegiance to that rigged market, and the Fed is more or less propping it up at gunpoint. But short of completely rearranging the priorities of US society, what would you have policy during a deep recession be?
I think we should leave that experimentation for the boom times when the society has some cushion of security - not when workers are struggling to keep up. But oh, yeah - during the boom times Republicans argue that it's immoral to run surpluses with "the tapxpayers' money" - money that has already been spent, I might add.
The Fed has no choice, since it has only one mechanism for stimulating the economy. The Fed can't build roads and bridges, so it's only way to pump money into the system is through the financial markets. Assuming we do need those roads an bridges built and maintained, any sane system would run surpluses during boom times and spend those surpluses to mitigate the effects of slumps. But US politics today uses boom times as an excuse to cut taxes and uses slumps as excuses to shrink government. Exactly the opposite of what the economy needs.
Now government may need to shrink - but even government workers' wages pump money into the economy more efficiently and effectively than the Fed can. Mostly, though, shrinking the government is a euphemism for eliminating environmental, safety and business practice regulations that powerful political contributors want eliminated. That's not to say there isn't waste - just that waste is the excuse for implementing a political agenda that has nothing to do with addressing the waste. If they wanted to address the waste, they'd address it by addressing it - not by building the Keystone XL pipeline.
And you think a sub $350 Lumia is going to be upgraded to Windows 10? Today's Moto G stands a much better chance of future upgrades than whatever cheap Windows phones are out there today. And if Moto doesn't do it, there's always Cyanogen...
Windows phones since 8+. So you mean a single point release from 8.0 to 8.1? That's a track record? And that following on the heels of the 7.5-7.8 dead end?
The article rightly points out that today's mobile apps provide enough of a Chicken and Egg dilemma, that even Microsoft can't get it. So Canonical's trying to sidestep that by saying we don't need mobile apps at all. They have a point. The way to sidestep the Chicken and Egg problem is to kill the chicken. When iOS and Android came along, the prevailing paradigm was traditional (Windows) desktop apps. But they came just at the moment that the web had made those traditional apps unnecessary for many (most?) casual internet users. And we largely have Mozilla to thank for that - for saving the web from Microsoft's attempt to Windows-ize it. So Safari and Chrome were able to provide the same access on a new class of device, and iOS and Android were born. But now a new mobile apps paradigm has taken hold, so for mobile there's a new chicken to kill.
Canonical should be focusing on their Scopes model more than on putting out mobile devices at this point. And that probably means doing what they can to get Android developers to build to that model (Apple probably won't let them in). And it wouldn't hurt to encourage Scopes on desktops - stressing Windows, Mac, Linux and Android portability as the carrot. If enough users are centering enough of their activities around Scopes, then - and only then - the mobile paradigm might be open to a new OS player. Who knows, maybe that's what Canonical is really doing here - putting out a proof of concept device, and introducing a new dev paradigm. But if that's the case, they need to stress that Scopes isn't just a Canonical thing.
Of course, the real problem is the moronic US public that knows the climate change deniers are lying, but repeats their lies because... Obama!
We think we're so far above the tribal idiocy of Shiite vs. Sunni, and yeah, we don't go around beheading our enemies, but we are becoming just as much an 'us vs. them' society.
Okay. So what do you do when you already have shown the opposing arguments to be false, and they keep making them. And then they resort to defaming your character, since they can't really counter your science. Some societies will go for a strict free speech approach that allows the liar to keep on lying and hopes that the effects won't be too bad. Other societies decide to put limits on how long you can keep spreading lies publicly. You may decide to think of this as censorship, but certainly there are degrees. Canada's certainly not coming down on the side of suppressing facts here... The US errs on the side of letting rich guys pay to spread lies. Which is the better approach?
Whose crap is on your iPhone or WinPhone? At least Android lets you sideload alternatives. Seriously, if you use a search engine, they're logging your searches. If you use a free email system, they're logging your emails. I guess Firefox private mode might help you when searching - if you don't trust Chrome's incognito...
If they reproduce asexually, then evolution has to count only on random mutations and copying errors. Sexual reproduction intentionally mixes up the genes so you get new combinations all the time. Evolution based on random mutations that still produce a viable organism is closer to monkeys at typewriters.
Well, maybe the home PC is dying then. I have both Windows 7 and Linux Mint on my home PC. I never even boot Windows 7 - though my partner uses it to fill his ipod. And when I work from home, I use remote desktop from my Mint system to get to my office PC. As long as you can get to your corporate VPN (big if - it took some doing for me to get it to work), even Chromebooks can do that.
And a lot of companies virtualizing Windows desktops would love to replace most of the traditional desktop software they use with web based stuff. They don't like the cost and hassle of maintaining virtualized Windows environments for their users, they're just locked in to Windows-only software - for now... There's still a market for content creation, gaming, etc, that needs lots of dedicated desktop computing power - but it's a shrinking market (except maybe the gaming part - but consoles handle much of that).
I think the iPhone was successful before they supported 3rd party apps. They already had the entertainment basics built in - which at the time meant playing your iTunes collection on your phone. But yeah, 3rd party apps are what prevented Microsoft from copying the iPhone and stealing the business. Apple won that one by playing one of Microsoft's games - lock in the developers and let them sell your system for you.
Microsoft tried to use Windows 8 to do that. They were able to count on selling Windows 8 to new PC buyers - and they figured that would get the deveopers back from Apple. Hasn't worked out, though. The desktop didn't need new phone apps.
In fact, other than the apps that are already there, desktops today may as well be Chromebooks. That's why Mac sales are also booming. Most home PC users are just using them for the web, email and streaming video. PC's, Macs and Chromebooks do all of these equally well. PC's still win for users that need 3rd party apps - and for gamers. Macs are fine if the particular 3rd party apps you need happen to be there. And even Linux is fine if the only 3rd party app you need is Office - and you find LibreOffice compatibility good enough for your needs.
For everybody else, Chromebooks get the job done. Even if many Slashdotters can't wrap their minds around that, Microsoft can. That's why they're trying to kill off Chromebooks with an equivalent stripped-down Windows platform. Not sure if it even matters any more, though, since it's the change in how PCs are used, not the specific competitor, that's changed the landscape.
It's not that Microsoft overlooked the entertainment part of the market. Microsoft routinely 'overlooked' all parts of the market when those parts were in their early stages.
Prior to the iPod, they were able to get away with letting everybody else figure out what the new areas of personal computing were going to be. Then they picked the already established winners and used their monopoly tying power to overcome them. It worked for integrated dev tools. It worked for office software. It even mostly worked for web browsers. It didn't work for the iPod, because there was nothing that Microsoft could use to tie their late-to-market Zune players to. Apple made an appealing product, and they won the market. Plus, most iPod users were tied by their music collections to Apple.
And the iPod begat the iPhone - which was too complex for Microsoft to play quick-enough catch up and use, say, 'real IE' or exclusive connectivity to exchange to succeed. In fact, the success of the iPhone and iPad killed IE as a selling point by solidifying the notion that web sites had better not be IE specific if they wanted to get the hits. Once exchange connectivity and good enough MSOffice viewers became available on iOS and Android, the window of opportunity closed.
Every web site you log into on your iPhone does the same thing that it does when you log into it from your Android phone. Every major search engine sells targeted advertising based on what it knows about you - which is the only 'you' Google (or Bing, for that matter) sells to everyone. They DO NOT sell the information. But in any case, if you don't use the major search engines, or log into Google services, you have the same freedom from Google tracking on Apple or Android. It's not as if the services on an iPhone don't track you - just because Apple's not the one doing the tracking...
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Mint's KDE flavor is very nice already. The only problem with KDE these days is it's original 'too much configurability' issue. Yes, it may be hard to believe, but KDE has actually proven that there can be too much configurabilitty (or at least too much to present routinely to casual users).
People complain about certain aspects of KDE - especially the search indexer, but distros don't have to include it all.
As Chrome gains the ability to run Android apps, a touchscreen will be a must. Not because touch is great on a laptop, but because Android apps would be awful with a trackpad. (actually, everything's awful with a trackpad, but I assume you can plug a mouse into this thing)
True, true.
The real story is the wave of reflexive paranoia infecting the free software crowd. First it was "systemd is taking over and destroying Linux as we know and love it". Now it's "Google's really evil... well not evil, but we think it could become evil... well, arrogant and forcing us to adopt new technology before we're ready..."
Okay, the "Google's evil and handing over your SSN to advertisers" meme's been around for a while now. But seriously, folks...
You'll see iPhones and Blackberries. But when it's a windows phone, you get a loving full-screen closeup - showing the transition from the Tiles through to the Conttacts app. Or you'll see the SMS app with animated conversations.
I remember when Under The Dome came out, and every other scene someone was holding a Surface or WinPhone up to the camera. If they needed to show someone a photo, you'd see them navigate all the way from the tiles to where the plot wanted them to go. The most obvious and bone-headed product placement ever.
And if they were really smart, they would include tools in there so that existing WIN32 code could be re-purposed for use in jump-starting an app in the new platform-agnostic toolset. Existing WIN32 code is their biggest asset, and from Windows 8 on, they've done their best to piss on it - and the developers that spent years writing it. Big mistake.
The whole 'bloatware subsidizes your computer' meme may be about to be challenged. I assume Lenovo won't suddenly start charging more for their PC's with the bloatware removed - the industry's too competitive for that. So now we have a major PC manufacturer that could really subtract Windows (and/or offer Linux pre-loaded) and show the true price differential. Will it happen - who knows?
So what? It's pretty well established that iOS users have more money on average than Android users - which makes sense, since there are so many inexpensive Android devices available. Still, you either target those users or you don't. Writing for iOS won't reach them. But, just because they're not the most profitable set of users, doesn't mean you can afford to ignore them.
I'd mod you 'funny' if I didn't think you meant it. Android has hundreds of millions of users. Ubuntu probably has a few million (maybe tens of millions). Other distros, even fewer. If numbers mean anything, it should be obvious which of these accounts for "Linux's success"?
Linux fragmentation is good in the sense that it's openness has allowed it to usher in whole new device categories (TiVo, Chromecast, Raspberry, home NAS boxes, etc). The one thing that Linux fragmentation has not helped is desktop adoption and especially 3rd party application development, which is still practically non-existent. And I use Linux as my primary desktop, so this isn't some uninformed rant.
I say if rendering their cash cows 'kind of fragile' causes them to become a different company, render away. No sense stopping now, when they're just beginning to change. Believe me, if they had a way of locking developers down to Metro, they'd do it.
I could see a day where Intel stopped manufacturing 'desktop' chips. Not because of their high heat output, but because the desktop market became no longer a specific profit center that they couldn't serve with their laptop chips. Of course, since Intel will still make server-class chips, I guess anybody wanting to build a high power desktop could use those. That is, until ARM takes over as a server architecture.
Your loaded use of "Gay agenda", aside, you're actually right. The writer of this movie sees it as a much needed apology to a brilliant man (are you denying that?) who made an enormous contribution to the war effort (are you denying that?) that happend to contain the seeds of the computer revolution we now all take for granted (are you denying that?). And after all that was persecuted by his government and essentially driven to suicide. Apologies are probably in order, no?
So what's the Gay agenda here - not to torture people for who they are?
The original article bemoans the way technology is (or is not) presented in the film. And it has a point - but it's beside the point. Yes, this film was made to teach us some history (more accurate, one might argue, than the history in "American Sniper"), but mostly to elevate a man who deeply deserves to be known and appreciated. And there was some interesting history in there anyway - about the weak link in the German messages that allowed the code to be broken, and about the way the army sometimes held back on what it had intercepted (at the cost of lives) in order to keep secret what they knew. It just wasn't history of technology. Sorry - different film.
I wonder if you thought stimulus was a dirty word back in 2009 when your 401K had lost 30% of its 'value'. I'll agree that a society basing its future security on 401K's heavily invested in the rigged US stock market is a nasty way to gain allegiance to that rigged market, and the Fed is more or less propping it up at gunpoint. But short of completely rearranging the priorities of US society, what would you have policy during a deep recession be?
I think we should leave that experimentation for the boom times when the society has some cushion of security - not when workers are struggling to keep up. But oh, yeah - during the boom times Republicans argue that it's immoral to run surpluses with "the tapxpayers' money" - money that has already been spent, I might add.
The Fed has no choice, since it has only one mechanism for stimulating the economy. The Fed can't build roads and bridges, so it's only way to pump money into the system is through the financial markets. Assuming we do need those roads an bridges built and maintained, any sane system would run surpluses during boom times and spend those surpluses to mitigate the effects of slumps. But US politics today uses boom times as an excuse to cut taxes and uses slumps as excuses to shrink government. Exactly the opposite of what the economy needs.
Now government may need to shrink - but even government workers' wages pump money into the economy more efficiently and effectively than the Fed can. Mostly, though, shrinking the government is a euphemism for eliminating environmental, safety and business practice regulations that powerful political contributors want eliminated. That's not to say there isn't waste - just that waste is the excuse for implementing a political agenda that has nothing to do with addressing the waste. If they wanted to address the waste, they'd address it by addressing it - not by building the Keystone XL pipeline.
And you think a sub $350 Lumia is going to be upgraded to Windows 10? Today's Moto G stands a much better chance of future upgrades than whatever cheap Windows phones are out there today. And if Moto doesn't do it, there's always Cyanogen...
Windows phones since 8+. So you mean a single point release from 8.0 to 8.1? That's a track record? And that following on the heels of the 7.5-7.8 dead end?
The article rightly points out that today's mobile apps provide enough of a Chicken and Egg dilemma, that even Microsoft can't get it. So Canonical's trying to sidestep that by saying we don't need mobile apps at all. They have a point. The way to sidestep the Chicken and Egg problem is to kill the chicken. When iOS and Android came along, the prevailing paradigm was traditional (Windows) desktop apps. But they came just at the moment that the web had made those traditional apps unnecessary for many (most?) casual internet users. And we largely have Mozilla to thank for that - for saving the web from Microsoft's attempt to Windows-ize it. So Safari and Chrome were able to provide the same access on a new class of device, and iOS and Android were born. But now a new mobile apps paradigm has taken hold, so for mobile there's a new chicken to kill.
Canonical should be focusing on their Scopes model more than on putting out mobile devices at this point. And that probably means doing what they can to get Android developers to build to that model (Apple probably won't let them in). And it wouldn't hurt to encourage Scopes on desktops - stressing Windows, Mac, Linux and Android portability as the carrot. If enough users are centering enough of their activities around Scopes, then - and only then - the mobile paradigm might be open to a new OS player. Who knows, maybe that's what Canonical is really doing here - putting out a proof of concept device, and introducing a new dev paradigm. But if that's the case, they need to stress that Scopes isn't just a Canonical thing.
Of course, the real problem is the moronic US public that knows the climate change deniers are lying, but repeats their lies because... Obama!
We think we're so far above the tribal idiocy of Shiite vs. Sunni, and yeah, we don't go around beheading our enemies, but we are becoming just as much an 'us vs. them' society.
Okay. So what do you do when you already have shown the opposing arguments to be false, and they keep making them. And then they resort to defaming your character, since they can't really counter your science. Some societies will go for a strict free speech approach that allows the liar to keep on lying and hopes that the effects won't be too bad. Other societies decide to put limits on how long you can keep spreading lies publicly. You may decide to think of this as censorship, but certainly there are degrees. Canada's certainly not coming down on the side of suppressing facts here... The US errs on the side of letting rich guys pay to spread lies. Which is the better approach?
Whose crap is on your iPhone or WinPhone? At least Android lets you sideload alternatives. Seriously, if you use a search engine, they're logging your searches. If you use a free email system, they're logging your emails. I guess Firefox private mode might help you when searching - if you don't trust Chrome's incognito...
If they reproduce asexually, then evolution has to count only on random mutations and copying errors. Sexual reproduction intentionally mixes up the genes so you get new combinations all the time. Evolution based on random mutations that still produce a viable organism is closer to monkeys at typewriters.
Well, maybe the home PC is dying then. I have both Windows 7 and Linux Mint on my home PC. I never even boot Windows 7 - though my partner uses it to fill his ipod. And when I work from home, I use remote desktop from my Mint system to get to my office PC. As long as you can get to your corporate VPN (big if - it took some doing for me to get it to work), even Chromebooks can do that.
And a lot of companies virtualizing Windows desktops would love to replace most of the traditional desktop software they use with web based stuff. They don't like the cost and hassle of maintaining virtualized Windows environments for their users, they're just locked in to Windows-only software - for now... There's still a market for content creation, gaming, etc, that needs lots of dedicated desktop computing power - but it's a shrinking market (except maybe the gaming part - but consoles handle much of that).
I think the iPhone was successful before they supported 3rd party apps. They already had the entertainment basics built in - which at the time meant playing your iTunes collection on your phone. But yeah, 3rd party apps are what prevented Microsoft from copying the iPhone and stealing the business. Apple won that one by playing one of Microsoft's games - lock in the developers and let them sell your system for you.
Microsoft tried to use Windows 8 to do that. They were able to count on selling Windows 8 to new PC buyers - and they figured that would get the deveopers back from Apple. Hasn't worked out, though. The desktop didn't need new phone apps.
In fact, other than the apps that are already there, desktops today may as well be Chromebooks. That's why Mac sales are also booming. Most home PC users are just using them for the web, email and streaming video. PC's, Macs and Chromebooks do all of these equally well. PC's still win for users that need 3rd party apps - and for gamers. Macs are fine if the particular 3rd party apps you need happen to be there. And even Linux is fine if the only 3rd party app you need is Office - and you find LibreOffice compatibility good enough for your needs.
For everybody else, Chromebooks get the job done. Even if many Slashdotters can't wrap their minds around that, Microsoft can. That's why they're trying to kill off Chromebooks with an equivalent stripped-down Windows platform. Not sure if it even matters any more, though, since it's the change in how PCs are used, not the specific competitor, that's changed the landscape.
It's not that Microsoft overlooked the entertainment part of the market. Microsoft routinely 'overlooked' all parts of the market when those parts were in their early stages.
Prior to the iPod, they were able to get away with letting everybody else figure out what the new areas of personal computing were going to be. Then they picked the already established winners and used their monopoly tying power to overcome them. It worked for integrated dev tools. It worked for office software. It even mostly worked for web browsers. It didn't work for the iPod, because there was nothing that Microsoft could use to tie their late-to-market Zune players to. Apple made an appealing product, and they won the market. Plus, most iPod users were tied by their music collections to Apple.
And the iPod begat the iPhone - which was too complex for Microsoft to play quick-enough catch up and use, say, 'real IE' or exclusive connectivity to exchange to succeed. In fact, the success of the iPhone and iPad killed IE as a selling point by solidifying the notion that web sites had better not be IE specific if they wanted to get the hits. Once exchange connectivity and good enough MSOffice viewers became available on iOS and Android, the window of opportunity closed.
Every web site you log into on your iPhone does the same thing that it does when you log into it from your Android phone. Every major search engine sells targeted advertising based on what it knows about you - which is the only 'you' Google (or Bing, for that matter) sells to everyone. They DO NOT sell the information. But in any case, if you don't use the major search engines, or log into Google services, you have the same freedom from Google tracking on Apple or Android. It's not as if the services on an iPhone don't track you - just because Apple's not the one doing the tracking...