If anything, lock out, if it indeed takes place, is more likely to effect prebuilt of-the-shelf OEM craputers, the ones that don't ship with the OS CD, and are filled to the brim with crapware, ie: things nobody in their sane mind, except the tech illiterate would opt buying. The higher end systems, as well as anything someone builds on their own, will likely not be effected by this.
Actually, I find it quite economical to purchase those "craputers" on occasion. No configuration headaches, and with the addition of a decent video card, quite suitable for playing the latest crap games on. Biggest benefit? $400 gaming rig with a 1-year warranty, available immediately (no shipping time, no shipping charge).
Admittedly, if I were going to purchase a PC for "serious" usage, I would build it from carefully selected components, purchased online so as to maximize my bang-per-buck and ensure maximum compatibility and reliability for its intended purpose.
If I just want something to bang on when I'm looking to waste time? Who cares if the power supply won't outlast the warranty? Why worry about a motherboard failing a smoke test 6 months into the purchase? It's cheap enough to replace when the warranty runs out, anyway, so whatever.
Besides, you can always bring it in for warranty work just before the warranty expires, get it running "top-notch" for what it is, then put it in the paper for 75% of what you paid for it and sell it to some other poor schmuck who really doesn't know anything about tech. It boots up, it obviously works just fine.
You're missing the part where you can't toggle this option in the BIOS - one of MSFT's requirements is that it not be a programmable interface.
At best, we're looking at stepping back a decade in hardware configuration. "No programmable interface" means we have to crack the case and flip a jumper or dip switch. The hardware manufacturers won't mind in the slightest, they'll just begin refusing your warranty because you opened the case - and we're right back to the "black boxes" that computers were 25 years ago.
Not only that, but what were you doing opening the case, anyway? The system comes configured optimally from the manufacturer, there's no reason to be messing around inside it - you must be a pirate!
This is going to have a phenomenal effect on the IT industry, if handled improperly.
Your post was unintelligible because public school didn't help you enough. Please learn to spell and punctuate properly before posting again, so that the rest of us can successfully parse your intended meaning.
This has been a public service announcement, as well as an ad-hominem attack.
All they have to do is require that all OEMs give the user the ability to control this (which is most OEMs will do anyway). The whole issue goes away and nobodies default security is any less than it would've been anyway.
I thought MS forcing OEMs to do anything was evil. But when its something that YOU want, its evil NOT to force OEMs. Funny how that works.. But then again I am not an anti-ms troll.
Forcing someone to allow choice sounds suspiciously like "Do not remove freedoms", to me. Guess you must be a pro-MS troll.
chip still holds the key, a fancy enough antenna(narrowly directed, multi pickup, and a high speed sampler) and a decent AI should be able to pry the key out of the chip by analyzing the electronic noise it makes
At that point, I think it would be easier/cheaper just to sue.
For example, if DVD decryption hadn't been broken open and spread across the internet, it might be viable to sue the DVD-making companies to acquire their key in order to decrypt the DVD for "software interoperability" purposes, or sue someone else to acquire whatever information is required in order to make the disc playable.
That is to say: I have a valid, legally-purchased media containing valid, legally-purchased media, and am attempting to utilize valid, legally-purchased hardware to access that media... and it won't work because my PC is running something other than Windows? I can sue Microsoft for anti-trust, I can sue the DVD drive's manufacturer for failure to provide support, I can sue the DVD distributer for failing to indicate that Windows is required in order to use the media for its intended purpose, I can sue the DVD consortium for encrypting the content in the first place.
Alternatively, I could just go torrent it, but that discussion is irrelevant to the current one.
If all she needs is browsing/mp3 player, ocasionally taking laptop to some trip with her, well... whats the problem?
In that case, I'd recommend an iPod or android phone. Same price, probably available in pink (or at least a case can be found in that color), and it fits in a pocket instead of requiring yet another bag to carry - unless the laptop bag is an opportunity to find one more "oh so cute" accessory for her outfit?
I have personally seen a gril going and asking the salesman : which of these laptops are available in pink After that she bought the one with the least weight among the pink ones She did not check the config even once
If her computing requirements are "check email and shoe-shop online", then she probably didn't need to concern herself over anything other than whether she was able to lug it around, and whether it matched her handbag.
Not trying to tell you how to keep your system running, but if you've been running your system off the same "power strip" for 12 years, you should know that any "surge protection" capabilities it had are extremely likely to be failed at this point, without indicating in any way that it has done so.
On a related note, I run any piece of electronics I purchase from a battery backup, not just a surge strip. This is likely due to me not trusting the power anywhere I've lived in the last 2 decades, but it is also due to my knowledge that the dips and brownouts are just as harmful as the spikes, and a surge protector only covers the spikes.
The way I see it, not buying a solid battery backup to go with your expensive and shiny toy is good only for making sure you'll need to upgrade more often to replace failed components.
It's not up to the U.S. market to decide whether all pc's should be running SecureBoot. Would China go along with Secure Boot, or would they just design and build their own PC's?
Now, before you tell me that I'm nitpicking, consider this: False positives are not at all unheard of with antivirus software. Avira, Avast, AVG, et al, have been known to flag valid, clean software as potentially dangerous, and most sensible people installing something from a known-good source that claims the source file is not compromised will immediately assume it's a false positive and submit it to the AV company. While Bott did the correct thing in submitting it, he dismissed it as the fault of users simply because he couldn't recreate the problem. Ah yes, not a chance that MS could do anything wrong...
Don't leave out the big boys... McAfee has twice released an update that deleted (not quarantined) critical Windows system files with no confirmation; those files were not infected, they were bog-standard OS files.
It's really too bad Shuttleworth decided to play "retarded change of the week" with what used to be a Windows-killing distribution... When Ubuntu was exceedingly usable by people who already had computers, it was incredibly easy to get them to "try it out for a week, if you don't like it we'll put Windows back on".
My three main complaints (other than the removal of the ability to run the functional desktop environment from the default installation as of 11.10) are as follows (in case Canonical is actually paying attention):
The removal of the Applications menu - this makes no sense whatsoever, as the search feature only works if you know what you're looking for. Well, I guess it makes sense on a tablet or other mobile device, kinda, in the sense that a menu large enough to see on a 4 or 7 inch screen would be ridiculously large... but my desktop has a 23" 1080p screen, so everything in Unity is already ridiculously large. Also, I thought Ubuntu was supposed to be a desktop PC operating system.
The moving and reordering of the Minimize/Maximize/Close buttons - the only thing I can figure on this one is that someone felt that OS X was better than the other 90% of the market's screen layout. That someone must have been so enamored with the idea that they included it despite the usability testing that indicated that people didn't want it because it was confusing, or hated it because they were constantly clicking the wrong button when reaching to minimize windows (Maximizing is a simple matter of double-clicking the titlebar).
The inclusion of Ubuntu One - really, my only complaint here is that it doesn't qualify as "free" software - the server-side source isn't available. Well, that and the fact that there are several other options that are actually free of charge, and offer huge amounts more space; I don't use those, either. The way I see it, if I have internet access, I can access the files on my own server, thanks. I kinda thought the server functionality of Linux was part of the point.
Of course, it seems Windows has drunk the PlaySchool "My First Computing Device" KoolAid, as well, so maybe it'll all work out in the end. In the meantime, I'm shopping around for a new distribution as we speak (so to speak).
I wish android had been more like that (as it was kinda hyped to be). Being able to apt-get install (app name here) is exactly what my phone is missing... well, that and the ability to run the same app on my phone that I do on my PC, at the very least for those apps where the task at hand is identical.
I'd rather have a 7" tablet, to be honest. Feels better in my hand than a ten-incher tucked into the crook of my arm, and is more appropriately sized for reading an ebook or surfing while on the move.
That is, of course, assuming I need to be mobile. When I'm home, I want a 23" screen, quadrophonic sound, and a keyboard/mouse input system.
Similarly, I can see how Unity would be decent on a mobile device... but I have a half-dozen PCs in my living room (admittedly two of them are for professional purposes), and only one phone in my pocket. Dumbing down the desktop was a dumb move, and locking it down will lock Canonical out of my systems.
A business person will tell you that your main area of potential expansion is not your existing market - it is the new customers that you haven't attracted yet. And that means opening up to new markets.
... and a business person who is successful will tell you that alienating your existing customer base will not only lose you the customers you worked so hard to get, but word-of-mouth will lose you the ones you broke everything in an effort to obtain, as well.
You see, Ubuntu had this really good desktop interface, on a rock-solid OS that Just Worked; even the IT "pros" were impressed, and people switched to Ubuntu in droves.
Now Canonical has decided to break everything in an attempt to get the chumps... and the guys who tell their companies what to buy will be ditching Ubuntu in favor of a distro that hasn't suddenly become retarded and broken.
Capacitive touch screens are incompatible with a stylus.
Having said that, I hate Unity and am leaning towards run-of-the-mill Debian for my next upgrade cycle. It seems Canonical has forgotten that the majority of their user base is using a PC, not a "mobile device".
Display and printing are actually fairly tightly coupled already - most printing methods (drivers, whatever you want to call them) require a display system in order to have a canvas to paint on before sending it to the printer device, regardless of whether there is actually a "Print Preview" available to the end user. The printing system needs to assemble the object you are trying to print so that it can decide how to convey that information to the printer.
I have the Atrix 4G, which was the first to have the WebTop enabled, and also has a shiny laptop-shaped dock that does nothing more than give a bigger screen, keyboard, and touchpad (along with a bigger battery that actually charges your phone while it's docked).
The crippled monstrosity that you're describing as Ubuntu is not at all a usable desktop environment, unless by "usable desktop environment" you mean a realtime display of what the phone is already showing, with the ability to run Firefox next to it and use any web-app you have a URL for.
I rooted my phone to enable the webtop functionality without having to buy the dock (since I now have a BlueTooth keyboard), and was so underwhelmed that I'm about to undo those changes because it didn't add anything to the experience.
As I've said elsewhere in this thread, the mobile movement is going to slow down, and slim laptops or beefy desktops will go back to being king for anyone who actually wants to accomplish "work" with their computing device.
What do people who constantly rag on Unity want? I can understand they might be frustrated with some bugs, but latest release is very stable (at least for me). I am trying to understand what people miss from KDE, Gnome 2 or other DEs that Unity doesn't have or that it has implemented in a really bad way.
I want a menu full of programs that I can browse through when I'm looking for that thing that does the stuff with those picture things - not a "search for it" box that requires me to know the first few letters of the commandline - if I knew the name of the program, I wouldn't have to search for it.
I want a panel application that displays my system resources in a manner similar to the way System Monitor worked when it was docked in the panel.
For that matter, I want my panels back.
I want the option to use what I'm used to using, instead of being forced into a Fisher-Price "My First Tablet" interface on my $1200 PC.
I want an interface that makes it easy to launch the tasks that I want to perform, then gets out of my way.
Unity is "made of fail" for a desktop. Desktop sales may be down due to tablets and smartphones, but the mobile "fad" isn't a permanent state of affairs. Keyboards are way too useful to abandon desktops forever.
On the other hand, I'll be the first to admit - you give me a GNU/GPL OS on a hardware-accelerated interface, with a proper programming environment (say, a full Eclipse IDE) and the ability to run native Linux apps on my phone, through an HDMI cable to my 23" monitor, with a Bluetooth mouse and keyboard that have batteries that last longer than 3 days... and the only thing I'm likely to complain about is that SD cards only go up to 32GB.
Anyone who has played CyberPunk or ShadowRun knows what a cyberdeck is, and we're all just waiting for the chance to install the plugs in our brains...
That doesn't mean they are gonna give up on Linux. They are gonna keep on adding stupid crap and make it more "Windowsy", right? 'Cuz that's just what Linux needs...
I get the feeling you intended this to be a trollish post, but if you think about it for a moment, looking and feeling similar to Windows is exactly what a popular Linux distro needs. Back in '08, when Ubuntu's popularity took off, and Ubuntu was ripping Microsoft users out of their comfortable little worlds in droves, the main difference between Windows and Ubuntu was that Ubuntu installed in half the time that windows did, and the "Start Menu" was on the top-left instead of the bottom-left.
Now that Ubuntu has decided to force Unity on everyone (and a desktop GUI, that P.O.S. is not), people are running screaming away from Ubuntu. I myself am considering other distros for over a dozen machines, after cheerfully using Ubuntu on all of them since 2008.
Canonical has lost touch with their users, and is chasing after a pie-in-the-sky instead of going for a sure-fire win. The release date for this supposed iPad-killer is the same month as Windows XP's End-Of-Life; seems to me they should be going for an XP clone to be released the month before (or even the year before... 12.04 would be a wonderful time to see it), and scoop all those users who suddenly stop getting updates from Microsoft... perhaps with another YouTube-based viral video campaign touting all the benefits and showing off the eyecandy.
Slashdot Mirror
If anything, lock out, if it indeed takes place, is more likely to effect prebuilt of-the-shelf OEM craputers, the ones that don't ship with the OS CD, and are filled to the brim with crapware, ie: things nobody in their sane mind, except the tech illiterate would opt buying. The higher end systems, as well as anything someone builds on their own, will likely not be effected by this.
Actually, I find it quite economical to purchase those "craputers" on occasion. No configuration headaches, and with the addition of a decent video card, quite suitable for playing the latest crap games on. Biggest benefit? $400 gaming rig with a 1-year warranty, available immediately (no shipping time, no shipping charge).
Admittedly, if I were going to purchase a PC for "serious" usage, I would build it from carefully selected components, purchased online so as to maximize my bang-per-buck and ensure maximum compatibility and reliability for its intended purpose.
If I just want something to bang on when I'm looking to waste time? Who cares if the power supply won't outlast the warranty? Why worry about a motherboard failing a smoke test 6 months into the purchase? It's cheap enough to replace when the warranty runs out, anyway, so whatever.
Besides, you can always bring it in for warranty work just before the warranty expires, get it running "top-notch" for what it is, then put it in the paper for 75% of what you paid for it and sell it to some other poor schmuck who really doesn't know anything about tech. It boots up, it obviously works just fine.
More importantly, if you purchase a computer and do plan to dual-boot, this technology could make that an impossibility.
That is, you may not be able to run Windows on a machine that is "compromised" by having the Linux bootloader installed.
You're missing the part where you can't toggle this option in the BIOS - one of MSFT's requirements is that it not be a programmable interface.
At best, we're looking at stepping back a decade in hardware configuration. "No programmable interface" means we have to crack the case and flip a jumper or dip switch. The hardware manufacturers won't mind in the slightest, they'll just begin refusing your warranty because you opened the case - and we're right back to the "black boxes" that computers were 25 years ago.
Not only that, but what were you doing opening the case, anyway? The system comes configured optimally from the manufacturer, there's no reason to be messing around inside it - you must be a pirate!
This is going to have a phenomenal effect on the IT industry, if handled improperly.
Your post was unintelligible because public school didn't help you enough. Please learn to spell and punctuate properly before posting again, so that the rest of us can successfully parse your intended meaning.
This has been a public service announcement, as well as an ad-hominem attack.
Thank you and have a nice day.
All they have to do is require that all OEMs give the user the ability to control this (which is most OEMs will do anyway). The whole issue goes away and nobodies default security is any less than it would've been anyway.
I thought MS forcing OEMs to do anything was evil. But when its something that YOU want, its evil NOT to force OEMs. Funny how that works.. But then again I am not an anti-ms troll.
Forcing someone to allow choice sounds suspiciously like "Do not remove freedoms", to me. Guess you must be a pro-MS troll.
chip still holds the key, a fancy enough antenna(narrowly directed, multi pickup, and a high speed sampler) and a decent AI should be able to pry the key out of the chip by analyzing the electronic noise it makes
At that point, I think it would be easier/cheaper just to sue.
For example, if DVD decryption hadn't been broken open and spread across the internet, it might be viable to sue the DVD-making companies to acquire their key in order to decrypt the DVD for "software interoperability" purposes, or sue someone else to acquire whatever information is required in order to make the disc playable.
That is to say: I have a valid, legally-purchased media containing valid, legally-purchased media, and am attempting to utilize valid, legally-purchased hardware to access that media... and it won't work because my PC is running something other than Windows? I can sue Microsoft for anti-trust, I can sue the DVD drive's manufacturer for failure to provide support, I can sue the DVD distributer for failing to indicate that Windows is required in order to use the media for its intended purpose, I can sue the DVD consortium for encrypting the content in the first place.
Alternatively, I could just go torrent it, but that discussion is irrelevant to the current one.
If all she needs is browsing/mp3 player, ocasionally taking laptop to some trip with her, well... whats the problem?
In that case, I'd recommend an iPod or android phone. Same price, probably available in pink (or at least a case can be found in that color), and it fits in a pocket instead of requiring yet another bag to carry - unless the laptop bag is an opportunity to find one more "oh so cute" accessory for her outfit?
I have personally seen a gril going and asking the salesman : which of these laptops are available in pink
After that she bought the one with the least weight among the pink ones
She did not check the config even once
If her computing requirements are "check email and shoe-shop online", then she probably didn't need to concern herself over anything other than whether she was able to lug it around, and whether it matched her handbag.
Not trying to tell you how to keep your system running, but if you've been running your system off the same "power strip" for 12 years, you should know that any "surge protection" capabilities it had are extremely likely to be failed at this point, without indicating in any way that it has done so.
On a related note, I run any piece of electronics I purchase from a battery backup, not just a surge strip. This is likely due to me not trusting the power anywhere I've lived in the last 2 decades, but it is also due to my knowledge that the dips and brownouts are just as harmful as the spikes, and a surge protector only covers the spikes.
The way I see it, not buying a solid battery backup to go with your expensive and shiny toy is good only for making sure you'll need to upgrade more often to replace failed components.
It's not up to the U.S. market to decide whether all pc's should be running SecureBoot. Would China go along with Secure Boot, or would they just design and build their own PC's?
You decide.
Ubuntu, etc will have to plaster "turn-off SecureBoot" all over their site.
... which Microsoft can then point at as an obvious indication that *nix is evil and/or insecure.
Now, before you tell me that I'm nitpicking, consider this: False positives are not at all unheard of with antivirus software. Avira, Avast, AVG, et al, have been known to flag valid, clean software as potentially dangerous, and most sensible people installing something from a known-good source that claims the source file is not compromised will immediately assume it's a false positive and submit it to the AV company. While Bott did the correct thing in submitting it, he dismissed it as the fault of users simply because he couldn't recreate the problem. Ah yes, not a chance that MS could do anything wrong...
Don't leave out the big boys... McAfee has twice released an update that deleted (not quarantined) critical Windows system files with no confirmation; those files were not infected, they were bog-standard OS files.
I'll link to Bott's post on the subject, for additional irony.
It's really too bad Shuttleworth decided to play "retarded change of the week" with what used to be a Windows-killing distribution... When Ubuntu was exceedingly usable by people who already had computers, it was incredibly easy to get them to "try it out for a week, if you don't like it we'll put Windows back on".
My three main complaints (other than the removal of the ability to run the functional desktop environment from the default installation as of 11.10) are as follows (in case Canonical is actually paying attention):
Of course, it seems Windows has drunk the PlaySchool "My First Computing Device" KoolAid, as well, so maybe it'll all work out in the end. In the meantime, I'm shopping around for a new distribution as we speak (so to speak).
Wow, that is great!
I wish android had been more like that (as it was kinda hyped to be). Being able to apt-get install (app name here) is exactly what my phone is missing... well, that and the ability to run the same app on my phone that I do on my PC, at the very least for those apps where the task at hand is identical.
You do have to admit, though, that it's not that bloated... the LiveCD is still a CD, not a DVD.
ppp-up, baby.
I'd rather have a 7" tablet, to be honest. Feels better in my hand than a ten-incher tucked into the crook of my arm, and is more appropriately sized for reading an ebook or surfing while on the move.
That is, of course, assuming I need to be mobile. When I'm home, I want a 23" screen, quadrophonic sound, and a keyboard/mouse input system.
Similarly, I can see how Unity would be decent on a mobile device... but I have a half-dozen PCs in my living room (admittedly two of them are for professional purposes), and only one phone in my pocket. Dumbing down the desktop was a dumb move, and locking it down will lock Canonical out of my systems.
A business person will tell you that your main area of potential expansion is not your existing market - it is the new customers that you haven't attracted yet. And that means opening up to new markets.
... and a business person who is successful will tell you that alienating your existing customer base will not only lose you the customers you worked so hard to get, but word-of-mouth will lose you the ones you broke everything in an effort to obtain, as well.
You see, Ubuntu had this really good desktop interface, on a rock-solid OS that Just Worked; even the IT "pros" were impressed, and people switched to Ubuntu in droves.
Now Canonical has decided to break everything in an attempt to get the chumps... and the guys who tell their companies what to buy will be ditching Ubuntu in favor of a distro that hasn't suddenly become retarded and broken.
Capacitive touch screens are incompatible with a stylus.
Having said that, I hate Unity and am leaning towards run-of-the-mill Debian for my next upgrade cycle. It seems Canonical has forgotten that the majority of their user base is using a PC, not a "mobile device".
Display and printing are actually fairly tightly coupled already - most printing methods (drivers, whatever you want to call them) require a display system in order to have a canvas to paint on before sending it to the printer device, regardless of whether there is actually a "Print Preview" available to the end user. The printing system needs to assemble the object you are trying to print so that it can decide how to convey that information to the printer.
I have the Atrix 4G, which was the first to have the WebTop enabled, and also has a shiny laptop-shaped dock that does nothing more than give a bigger screen, keyboard, and touchpad (along with a bigger battery that actually charges your phone while it's docked).
The crippled monstrosity that you're describing as Ubuntu is not at all a usable desktop environment, unless by "usable desktop environment" you mean a realtime display of what the phone is already showing, with the ability to run Firefox next to it and use any web-app you have a URL for.
I rooted my phone to enable the webtop functionality without having to buy the dock (since I now have a BlueTooth keyboard), and was so underwhelmed that I'm about to undo those changes because it didn't add anything to the experience.
As I've said elsewhere in this thread, the mobile movement is going to slow down, and slim laptops or beefy desktops will go back to being king for anyone who actually wants to accomplish "work" with their computing device.
You may refer to this unit as TorLinus of Borg. Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.
The really frustrating part about that feature is that you can turn it off, but only for the entire box.
... and one of the things I have always loved about Linux was that all the configuration was per-user.
This new system is not only counter-intuitive, but if it were an American governmental decision it would be deemed unconstitutional.
What do people who constantly rag on Unity want? I can understand they might be frustrated with some bugs, but latest release is very stable (at least for me). I am trying to understand what people miss from KDE, Gnome 2 or other DEs that Unity doesn't have or that it has implemented in a really bad way.
I want a menu full of programs that I can browse through when I'm looking for that thing that does the stuff with those picture things - not a "search for it" box that requires me to know the first few letters of the commandline - if I knew the name of the program, I wouldn't have to search for it.
I want a panel application that displays my system resources in a manner similar to the way System Monitor worked when it was docked in the panel.
For that matter, I want my panels back.
I want the option to use what I'm used to using, instead of being forced into a Fisher-Price "My First Tablet" interface on my $1200 PC.
I want an interface that makes it easy to launch the tasks that I want to perform, then gets out of my way.
Unity is "made of fail" for a desktop. Desktop sales may be down due to tablets and smartphones, but the mobile "fad" isn't a permanent state of affairs. Keyboards are way too useful to abandon desktops forever.
On the other hand, I'll be the first to admit - you give me a GNU/GPL OS on a hardware-accelerated interface, with a proper programming environment (say, a full Eclipse IDE) and the ability to run native Linux apps on my phone, through an HDMI cable to my 23" monitor, with a Bluetooth mouse and keyboard that have batteries that last longer than 3 days... and the only thing I'm likely to complain about is that SD cards only go up to 32GB.
Anyone who has played CyberPunk or ShadowRun knows what a cyberdeck is, and we're all just waiting for the chance to install the plugs in our brains...
That doesn't mean they are gonna give up on Linux. They are gonna keep on adding stupid crap and make it more "Windowsy", right? 'Cuz that's just what Linux needs...
I get the feeling you intended this to be a trollish post, but if you think about it for a moment, looking and feeling similar to Windows is exactly what a popular Linux distro needs. Back in '08, when Ubuntu's popularity took off, and Ubuntu was ripping Microsoft users out of their comfortable little worlds in droves, the main difference between Windows and Ubuntu was that Ubuntu installed in half the time that windows did, and the "Start Menu" was on the top-left instead of the bottom-left.
Now that Ubuntu has decided to force Unity on everyone (and a desktop GUI, that P.O.S. is not), people are running screaming away from Ubuntu. I myself am considering other distros for over a dozen machines, after cheerfully using Ubuntu on all of them since 2008.
Canonical has lost touch with their users, and is chasing after a pie-in-the-sky instead of going for a sure-fire win. The release date for this supposed iPad-killer is the same month as Windows XP's End-Of-Life; seems to me they should be going for an XP clone to be released the month before (or even the year before... 12.04 would be a wonderful time to see it), and scoop all those users who suddenly stop getting updates from Microsoft... perhaps with another YouTube-based viral video campaign touting all the benefits and showing off the eyecandy.