Oh for crying out loud. Europe has this problem solved. Every car has an owner, that owner is a person, even if it is a company. Thus if there is any ticket, any accident, anything else, the OWNER is responsible. Case closed!
The only catch is that if the owner can get somebody else to take a "fall" then that person will get the ticket, etc.
Because that would make the data less useful. Say for example the data contains John Wayne a cowboy from America, who likes to strut around in cowboy stuff in front of a screen. That is useful data because you know there is a real person struting around with real clothes. Now for example the data contains contains Wayne Rooney Fan a footballer who likes to play football, but lives in Hobo New Jersey. He likes Wayne Rooney. This data is less useful because you really don't know where he lives, or what he likes. He says he likes football, but which football, and if even?
Sure you can enter fake information in Facebook, but they have some fine print to say, "don't you dare!" And for the most part many people just play by the rules. But if you are allowed to enter nicknames, etc then most likely you will also be tempted to stretch the truth.
And here is where it gets really interesting for Facebook. REAL user information is useful for advertisers. FAKE user information is garbage for advertisers. How does Facebook monetize? Through advertisers!
No Apple has a point here. The reason why Apple charges 30%, even if that may seem high, is that its FAIR! How many times do bigger companies have an unfair advantage over smaller companies? Apple is saying, "hey big or small you pay the same fee!" Of course Microsoft is irked because they play by a different set of rules. Rules that they like to make up. Oh wait, this is the company that has been charged with monopolistic practices.
My answer to Microsoft, "tough shit live with it!"
I call BULLSHIT sir! If you have nothing running then you will get more than a day per charge. If however you have everything running under the moon then yes you will not get much of a charge. But then again neither will you from Android, or any other phone. I have both Android and iOS phones and the reality is that you need to turn crap off or target what you want running and what you don't. I can usually get about 3 to 4 days out of a charge and that is with email, and notifications running.
But hey you are an anonymous coward making rants and complaints for fear that you might be BS'ing us.
No it is a bad policy as the problems it entails outweigh the benefits. What if the US said, "sure you go on your own." BTW remember those businesses that wanted to ship products to us? Oh yeah not gonna happen without tariffs, delays at the border, and so on.
BEEP sorry wrong answer. It does not matter. The problem is that Skype is owned by a US global corporation. The company thus answers to the US laws since that is what applies for it. If anything else happens the US global corporation would rather pay a bit of money to silence the person than actually care about the laws. I can understand why they are doing this for if the US global corporation pisses off the US laws then they would be susceptible to being shut down.
Everything actually. US based global corporations have this habit of handing out users information at the drop of a hat. They do so, so they will not have problems with the law (as if). Because Skype received a request from somebody else and global corporations easily hand out information they just did so. There is quite a bit of spying going on!
This is not even a joke. Have you seen the new (cough) clone (cough) from HTC. If I were Nokia I would be furious. And there is Microsof thinking, "oh gee lets help HTC because Nokia is effing this up." No Nokia is not effing this up! Nokia is building kick ass phones. It is Microsoft that is screwing things up. The upgrade path from Windows Phone 7 and Windows 8 was pure and unadulterated Microsoft eff up! When I heard about this I thought, "wow and we thought Android vendors had a sucky upgrade path."
Oh this is fucking bullshit, there I said it! I have been coding since I have been 13 years old, which means I have been writing code for 30 years, and 20 years professionally. The idea that you don't need an IDE is a hair brained idea. How on earth are you supposed to keep track of the several thousand files? When I work on projects I like to keep the entire architecture and structure in my head. I use the intellisense system to find for me the proper class. I am not talking about documentation as that goes without saying. I am talking about using a naming convention so that you can easily find functionality. I personally hate code where I cannot understand what the functionality represents due to a bad naming convention.
If I have to keep track of every method name, and its parameters then I am definitely wasting time on stuff that does not need thinking about. I would be wasting time trying to get the right word, or type, or some little buttwipe problem. If you say, "oh but wait you should be able to keep track of the methods." I reply, "yeah please write some professional code!" Let's put it this way. How come JetBrains makes money from providing IDE's that do exactly what the article author is bad?
BTW as one other commentator said, "you could apply a google principle" and that I don't discount. That could be interesting.
Ok so to get intelligence we want the guy who is clean, knows to be effective and has polish? Really, that is who we want to get terrorist intelligence? Mob intelligence? You name the crime fighting unit (FBI, CIA, Military etc). The problem is that keeping a network safe and away from hackers is the same sort of person. They are not quite legal, not quite illegal. They are towing that line in the middle. They are definitely counter culture and could not give a eff what others think of them.
The intelligence units (maybe they already have these folks) think that network is a cost unit. They are not thinking in terms of cyber war, cyber criminals. I am not saying this is an individual sitting in the basement of their parents home. I am talking about those that work in Russia, or former east republics. These boys and girls are a completely different animal. For them these things are "relative" not "absolute".
The problem he is alluding to is quite interesting. We accept double agents. We accept terrorists who are "converted". We accept criminals who have "seen the light of day." But heaven forbid you smoke a doubie! No, that can't be right, that person is distrustful. WTF?
Remember this America went to war against Iraq based on a single opinion! An opinion of an "insider". RIGHT... This is good business because the doubie smoker, well he is a real problem for society and the IT infrastructure.
I read this entire analysis and here is my answer *cough* bullshit *cough*
The basis of Windows is based on the idea that when you have higher resolution you have more things shown on the screen. This is also the basis of Linux. Thus if you have a retina display in theory there would be so much detail that it is hard to read. However, and this is the big gotcha with the Apple vs Windows debate, the retina display does not mean more "detail."
To illustrate the idea let's think about a webpage and using pixels as an orientation. If you have more pixels then a 20px number will take up less space on a retinal display than a non retinal display. But the catch is that on a retinal display your iPad is like a regular iPad. Thus 20px regardless of iPad looks the same. You would then think, "but wait this means you have wasted pixels." No the pixels are not wasted because they are used to refine the letters, and images, and any type of SVG type rendering.
Microsoft uses anti-aliasing to make things look smoother, and to the most part it works. Where it fails and I see it with my Android devices, is in reading magazines, looking at pictures, and look at web pages.
I think the real reason why Microsoft did what they did is for two reasons;
1) Windows would have to be retooled as it is not able to do what Apple does. 2) Microsoft does not have the hardware experience to make the tablet as light, and as powerful as Apple.
So in typical Microsoft fashion they baffle us with bullshit!
But here is where Microsoft is STUPID. A smartphone != tablet != PC. Each has its use and its place. On this I agree with Tim Cook, sure we can build a combined refrigerator with a stove, but why bother? Ironically the kitchen, shop floors are examples of specialized and unique tooling with unique experiences. There is the universal wrench, but it sucks and is only a hack, as no self-respecting mechanic would use it for everything.
Ever tried to edit a spreadsheet on a smart phone? It sucks. Tried viewing a spreadsheet on a tablet? Works well, editing ok, but not productive. A spreadsheet does work best on a PC. Whenever I write much longer articles I need a full keyboard. Yes yes the surface has that. But I would also like a much bigger screen.
My ideal combination is a MacBook Air, with an iPad and an iPhone. Very light, very powerful. This could also be an Android ecosystem with an ultrabook running Linux (though I was hard pressed to find one as that is what I wanted).
OMG stop the presses, you are right having an on-premise private cloud is just going to change EVERYTHING. Here is a question, does anybody have an idea what that means? Yes yes the words are obvious. But what it sounds to me is that Microsoft has just invented the idea of having a huge honking data center on your own premises? I mean that must be rocket science and not something we had before, right?
Oh wait, we are also going to have agile cloud based IT. Yupe never had that before, actually asking the question, WTF are you talking about?
Note, yes I am being very cynical and pointing out that Microsoft is completely out of touch on what people need.
There is a problem IMO in this strategy. You are assuming that people will want to swipe and touch a screen. The Surface is a small device with a crappy mouse pad. The Apple MousePad is the norm and once you have used it, you don't go back. Imagine sitting at your desk and having to lift your hands to do anything? Not going to happen. Additionally ever tried to sit in front of a small screen to do work? Not very nice. I use 3 23" monitors for my daily work and will never go back to anything smaller.
The assumption that you are making is that people will want to continue using the Microsoft software paradigm. As seen by the oodles of OSX, and now Linux users they can do just fine without Microsoft software. That is the irony in this entire situation. People don't hate Microsoft, they have become indifferent to Microsoft. That is worse than hating because people will look at your stuff and say Meh. When people hate, you will have those that will use just because others hate. When people say Meh people move on because they don't want to be boring.
He does not get it. No it will not run and work. Tablet software runs and works well because it basically does very little, or is very heavily optimized. PC software that runs on a notebook is not heavily optimized, and it runs in general. Thus battery life ounce for ounce will not match. For example Intel tablets still have a little fan. I mean COME ON PEOPLE! I am not critique Intel, I am saying that there are moments when I use a PC, and moments I use a tablet. What has changed is that you don't need Microsoft software at all anymore.
About a year ago I switch to Linux and OSX and have not looked back. Between Ubuntu, OSX, iOS, and Android my world is just peachy. Sorry, but Microsoft blew its chances. I have said it before and say it again, Ballmer needs to be fired! Maybe then Microsoft can be fixed.
In the mid 80's in Canada we used Icon's, which were QNX terminals. I learned and watched that if somebody watches over the shoulder of the teacher they could get the root password, and copy all of the system files into a local directory thus buggering up the entire network. It buggered things up so badly the teacher that was the admin could not fix it themselves. It was not me, but a guy I was working on the computers with. Me at the time I was using Pet's and writing in Waterloo Basic. I built my first ISAM system with Waterloo Basic.
ROTFL yeah that ehow article is really accurate NOT...
Let's start taking the arguments apart:
The speed cameras are not impossible to spot. Actually dead easy and with trapster even easier. You just have to know what you are looking for.
Drivers follow a strict... ROTFL, yeah right! Drivers tend to follow the rules, but not always. In fact the biggest problem right now is that everybody drives in the left lane even though you are supposed to let faster traffic through.
You are required to put on a yellow vest: Really? News for me. I have yet to see anybody carrying that. I know in Italy they will fine you if you don't have one. But in nearly 20 years of driving I can honestly say I don't have a yellow vest. The triangle, yeah that is common.
You can stop on the side of the autobahn, and people do stop on the side of the autobahn if they have to.
Germans take pride in their car. Let's rephrase this. Some Germans take pride in their car. While there are no clunkers or whitetrash cars, there are cars that are very old. Though I do have agree European cars have better maintenance records since it is required by law.
Ehhh sorry, I have lived for nearly 20 years here and I would like to ask where these courtious, follow the rules and don't try to do anything stupid drivers are. You see I have a car that can, and have driven 250 KPH. Let me tell you there are more idiots out there than you let on. I can't tell you how often I have to slow down from 230 to 120 because a driver feels he has the right to a pass a truck doing 80. Yes folks trucks are allowed a maximum of 80.
You can drive safely at high speeds if people realize that you are driving at highspeeds and I will argue that even Americans clue into it.
I am sorry, but it as in Linux has not worked properly for ages. Yes yes I can tweak, twiddle to my hearts content and somehow figure out that I need to do a polka dance while singing the star bangled banner to get audio, or multi-screens to work. I have used Linux on and off since Yggdrasil. For the youngsters google it, for the older guys you know what distribution I am talking about.
Linux on the desktop has worked well since about 1 to 2 years ago with Ubuntu. Around that time Ubuntu did some major work on the UI and things just ended up working. I have talked to many of my friends and we all are saying that now Ubuntu is ready to give to newbies and people who just want to use a computer. In fact now Ubuntu works better than say Windows or OSX.
I have known Miguel since a long time ago, even have some photos with him coding on the floor as we were discussing some problems. He is IMO a smart guy who likes Open Source, but also likes to make money. I think there is nothing wrong with that. The fact that Microsoft did a cut off the knees of.NET is going to boomerang against Microsoft anyways. This was one boneheaded move by them. But I digress.
Miguel just wants a desktop that works and until recently his rant was right. The irony is that during that time Ubuntu grew up and he moved to OSX. I have moved away from Windows 100%, and now live in an Ubuntu and OSX world. It is a great world and things just work! About effen time folks. Does this mean there are still not problems? Absolutely the interface stuff is still an issue, but again the software vendors have developed hacks around it. Namely they do auto-compilation of the kernels. Not pretty, but it works and gets the job done.
Now before all of you start jumping on me on how well things are, let me reiterate I have been using Linux since Yggdrasil, and have gone through a ton of releases. Even did so recently. For example try to get a clean remote desktop working with anything but mainline Ubuntu. I mean one that is remote desktop compatible with tablets. Only Ubuntu works cleanly. Every other distribution has one problem or another related to clicking, or hanging, or crashing of the desktop.
So I read the article and only one thought went through my mind.
"Are you fucking kidding me?"
So here is the deal, I get a worse user interface, get to pay more for an operating system that offers virtually no benefit. Man I am so glad I shifting to OSX and Linux around the time Windows 8 was announced and released to devs. This is going to bite them in the ass and IMO with what I am experiencing with OSX and Linux, Microsoft really does suck!
And this is from a used to be Microsoft development author, Regional Director, and speaker.
BTW as a sidenote I actually really like Ubuntu Unity. At first disliked it, but have gotten quite accustomed to it. Now the other Linux distributions seem "old".
Slashdot Mirror
Oh for crying out loud. Europe has this problem solved. Every car has an owner, that owner is a person, even if it is a company. Thus if there is any ticket, any accident, anything else, the OWNER is responsible. Case closed!
The only catch is that if the owner can get somebody else to take a "fall" then that person will get the ticket, etc.
Because that would make the data less useful. Say for example the data contains John Wayne a cowboy from America, who likes to strut around in cowboy stuff in front of a screen. That is useful data because you know there is a real person struting around with real clothes. Now for example the data contains contains Wayne Rooney Fan a footballer who likes to play football, but lives in Hobo New Jersey. He likes Wayne Rooney. This data is less useful because you really don't know where he lives, or what he likes. He says he likes football, but which football, and if even?
Sure you can enter fake information in Facebook, but they have some fine print to say, "don't you dare!" And for the most part many people just play by the rules. But if you are allowed to enter nicknames, etc then most likely you will also be tempted to stretch the truth.
And here is where it gets really interesting for Facebook. REAL user information is useful for advertisers. FAKE user information is garbage for advertisers. How does Facebook monetize? Through advertisers!
No Apple has a point here. The reason why Apple charges 30%, even if that may seem high, is that its FAIR! How many times do bigger companies have an unfair advantage over smaller companies? Apple is saying, "hey big or small you pay the same fee!" Of course Microsoft is irked because they play by a different set of rules. Rules that they like to make up. Oh wait, this is the company that has been charged with monopolistic practices.
My answer to Microsoft, "tough shit live with it!"
ROTFL... Yes I am a German!
The problem here is that Apple can face anti-trust issues! While it does not have to license its patents, it does have to face anti-trust issues.
I call BULLSHIT sir! If you have nothing running then you will get more than a day per charge. If however you have everything running under the moon then yes you will not get much of a charge. But then again neither will you from Android, or any other phone. I have both Android and iOS phones and the reality is that you need to turn crap off or target what you want running and what you don't. I can usually get about 3 to 4 days out of a charge and that is with email, and notifications running.
But hey you are an anonymous coward making rants and complaints for fear that you might be BS'ing us.
No it is a bad policy as the problems it entails outweigh the benefits. What if the US said, "sure you go on your own." BTW remember those businesses that wanted to ship products to us? Oh yeah not gonna happen without tariffs, delays at the border, and so on.
BEEP sorry wrong answer. It does not matter. The problem is that Skype is owned by a US global corporation. The company thus answers to the US laws since that is what applies for it. If anything else happens the US global corporation would rather pay a bit of money to silence the person than actually care about the laws. I can understand why they are doing this for if the US global corporation pisses off the US laws then they would be susceptible to being shut down.
Everything actually. US based global corporations have this habit of handing out users information at the drop of a hat. They do so, so they will not have problems with the law (as if). Because Skype received a request from somebody else and global corporations easily hand out information they just did so. There is quite a bit of spying going on!
This is not even a joke. Have you seen the new (cough) clone (cough) from HTC. If I were Nokia I would be furious. And there is Microsof thinking, "oh gee lets help HTC because Nokia is effing this up." No Nokia is not effing this up! Nokia is building kick ass phones. It is Microsoft that is screwing things up. The upgrade path from Windows Phone 7 and Windows 8 was pure and unadulterated Microsoft eff up! When I heard about this I thought, "wow and we thought Android vendors had a sucky upgrade path."
Oh this is fucking bullshit, there I said it! I have been coding since I have been 13 years old, which means I have been writing code for 30 years, and 20 years professionally. The idea that you don't need an IDE is a hair brained idea. How on earth are you supposed to keep track of the several thousand files? When I work on projects I like to keep the entire architecture and structure in my head. I use the intellisense system to find for me the proper class. I am not talking about documentation as that goes without saying. I am talking about using a naming convention so that you can easily find functionality. I personally hate code where I cannot understand what the functionality represents due to a bad naming convention.
If I have to keep track of every method name, and its parameters then I am definitely wasting time on stuff that does not need thinking about. I would be wasting time trying to get the right word, or type, or some little buttwipe problem. If you say, "oh but wait you should be able to keep track of the methods." I reply, "yeah please write some professional code!" Let's put it this way. How come JetBrains makes money from providing IDE's that do exactly what the article author is bad?
BTW as one other commentator said, "you could apply a google principle" and that I don't discount. That could be interesting.
Ok so to get intelligence we want the guy who is clean, knows to be effective and has polish? Really, that is who we want to get terrorist intelligence? Mob intelligence? You name the crime fighting unit (FBI, CIA, Military etc). The problem is that keeping a network safe and away from hackers is the same sort of person. They are not quite legal, not quite illegal. They are towing that line in the middle. They are definitely counter culture and could not give a eff what others think of them.
The intelligence units (maybe they already have these folks) think that network is a cost unit. They are not thinking in terms of cyber war, cyber criminals. I am not saying this is an individual sitting in the basement of their parents home. I am talking about those that work in Russia, or former east republics. These boys and girls are a completely different animal. For them these things are "relative" not "absolute".
The problem he is alluding to is quite interesting. We accept double agents. We accept terrorists who are "converted". We accept criminals who have "seen the light of day." But heaven forbid you smoke a doubie! No, that can't be right, that person is distrustful. WTF?
Remember this America went to war against Iraq based on a single opinion! An opinion of an "insider". RIGHT... This is good business because the doubie smoker, well he is a real problem for society and the IT infrastructure.
I read this entire analysis and here is my answer *cough* bullshit *cough*
The basis of Windows is based on the idea that when you have higher resolution you have more things shown on the screen. This is also the basis of Linux. Thus if you have a retina display in theory there would be so much detail that it is hard to read. However, and this is the big gotcha with the Apple vs Windows debate, the retina display does not mean more "detail."
To illustrate the idea let's think about a webpage and using pixels as an orientation. If you have more pixels then a 20px number will take up less space on a retinal display than a non retinal display. But the catch is that on a retinal display your iPad is like a regular iPad. Thus 20px regardless of iPad looks the same. You would then think, "but wait this means you have wasted pixels." No the pixels are not wasted because they are used to refine the letters, and images, and any type of SVG type rendering.
Microsoft uses anti-aliasing to make things look smoother, and to the most part it works. Where it fails and I see it with my Android devices, is in reading magazines, looking at pictures, and look at web pages.
I think the real reason why Microsoft did what they did is for two reasons;
1) Windows would have to be retooled as it is not able to do what Apple does.
2) Microsoft does not have the hardware experience to make the tablet as light, and as powerful as Apple.
So in typical Microsoft fashion they baffle us with bullshit!
But here is where Microsoft is STUPID. A smartphone != tablet != PC. Each has its use and its place. On this I agree with Tim Cook, sure we can build a combined refrigerator with a stove, but why bother? Ironically the kitchen, shop floors are examples of specialized and unique tooling with unique experiences. There is the universal wrench, but it sucks and is only a hack, as no self-respecting mechanic would use it for everything.
Ever tried to edit a spreadsheet on a smart phone? It sucks. Tried viewing a spreadsheet on a tablet? Works well, editing ok, but not productive. A spreadsheet does work best on a PC. Whenever I write much longer articles I need a full keyboard. Yes yes the surface has that. But I would also like a much bigger screen.
My ideal combination is a MacBook Air, with an iPad and an iPhone. Very light, very powerful. This could also be an Android ecosystem with an ultrabook running Linux (though I was hard pressed to find one as that is what I wanted).
Wayne Gretzky when you play hockey, don't look where the puck is/has been, but look for where the puck will be.
This is what Schmidt is talking about.
OMG stop the presses, you are right having an on-premise private cloud is just going to change EVERYTHING. Here is a question, does anybody have an idea what that means? Yes yes the words are obvious. But what it sounds to me is that Microsoft has just invented the idea of having a huge honking data center on your own premises? I mean that must be rocket science and not something we had before, right?
Oh wait, we are also going to have agile cloud based IT. Yupe never had that before, actually asking the question, WTF are you talking about?
Note, yes I am being very cynical and pointing out that Microsoft is completely out of touch on what people need.
There is a problem IMO in this strategy. You are assuming that people will want to swipe and touch a screen. The Surface is a small device with a crappy mouse pad. The Apple MousePad is the norm and once you have used it, you don't go back. Imagine sitting at your desk and having to lift your hands to do anything? Not going to happen. Additionally ever tried to sit in front of a small screen to do work? Not very nice. I use 3 23" monitors for my daily work and will never go back to anything smaller.
The assumption that you are making is that people will want to continue using the Microsoft software paradigm. As seen by the oodles of OSX, and now Linux users they can do just fine without Microsoft software. That is the irony in this entire situation. People don't hate Microsoft, they have become indifferent to Microsoft. That is worse than hating because people will look at your stuff and say Meh. When people hate, you will have those that will use just because others hate. When people say Meh people move on because they don't want to be boring.
He does not get it. No it will not run and work. Tablet software runs and works well because it basically does very little, or is very heavily optimized. PC software that runs on a notebook is not heavily optimized, and it runs in general. Thus battery life ounce for ounce will not match. For example Intel tablets still have a little fan. I mean COME ON PEOPLE! I am not critique Intel, I am saying that there are moments when I use a PC, and moments I use a tablet. What has changed is that you don't need Microsoft software at all anymore.
About a year ago I switch to Linux and OSX and have not looked back. Between Ubuntu, OSX, iOS, and Android my world is just peachy. Sorry, but Microsoft blew its chances. I have said it before and say it again, Ballmer needs to be fired! Maybe then Microsoft can be fixed.
In the mid 80's in Canada we used Icon's, which were QNX terminals. I learned and watched that if somebody watches over the shoulder of the teacher they could get the root password, and copy all of the system files into a local directory thus buggering up the entire network. It buggered things up so badly the teacher that was the admin could not fix it themselves. It was not me, but a guy I was working on the computers with. Me at the time I was using Pet's and writing in Waterloo Basic. I built my first ISAM system with Waterloo Basic.
ROTFL yeah that ehow article is really accurate NOT...
Let's start taking the arguments apart:
The speed cameras are not impossible to spot. Actually dead easy and with trapster even easier. You just have to know what you are looking for.
Drivers follow a strict... ROTFL, yeah right! Drivers tend to follow the rules, but not always. In fact the biggest problem right now is that everybody drives in the left lane even though you are supposed to let faster traffic through.
You are required to put on a yellow vest: Really? News for me. I have yet to see anybody carrying that. I know in Italy they will fine you if you don't have one. But in nearly 20 years of driving I can honestly say I don't have a yellow vest. The triangle, yeah that is common.
You can stop on the side of the autobahn, and people do stop on the side of the autobahn if they have to.
Germans take pride in their car. Let's rephrase this. Some Germans take pride in their car. While there are no clunkers or whitetrash cars, there are cars that are very old. Though I do have agree European cars have better maintenance records since it is required by law.
Ehhh sorry, I have lived for nearly 20 years here and I would like to ask where these courtious, follow the rules and don't try to do anything stupid drivers are. You see I have a car that can, and have driven 250 KPH. Let me tell you there are more idiots out there than you let on. I can't tell you how often I have to slow down from 230 to 120 because a driver feels he has the right to a pass a truck doing 80. Yes folks trucks are allowed a maximum of 80.
You can drive safely at high speeds if people realize that you are driving at highspeeds and I will argue that even Americans clue into it.
Oh there is a standard desktop for Linux ;) Its called Ubuntu.
I am sorry, but it as in Linux has not worked properly for ages. Yes yes I can tweak, twiddle to my hearts content and somehow figure out that I need to do a polka dance while singing the star bangled banner to get audio, or multi-screens to work. I have used Linux on and off since Yggdrasil. For the youngsters google it, for the older guys you know what distribution I am talking about.
Linux on the desktop has worked well since about 1 to 2 years ago with Ubuntu. Around that time Ubuntu did some major work on the UI and things just ended up working. I have talked to many of my friends and we all are saying that now Ubuntu is ready to give to newbies and people who just want to use a computer. In fact now Ubuntu works better than say Windows or OSX.
I have known Miguel since a long time ago, even have some photos with him coding on the floor as we were discussing some problems. He is IMO a smart guy who likes Open Source, but also likes to make money. I think there is nothing wrong with that. The fact that Microsoft did a cut off the knees of .NET is going to boomerang against Microsoft anyways. This was one boneheaded move by them. But I digress.
Miguel just wants a desktop that works and until recently his rant was right. The irony is that during that time Ubuntu grew up and he moved to OSX. I have moved away from Windows 100%, and now live in an Ubuntu and OSX world. It is a great world and things just work! About effen time folks. Does this mean there are still not problems? Absolutely the interface stuff is still an issue, but again the software vendors have developed hacks around it. Namely they do auto-compilation of the kernels. Not pretty, but it works and gets the job done.
Now before all of you start jumping on me on how well things are, let me reiterate I have been using Linux since Yggdrasil, and have gone through a ton of releases. Even did so recently. For example try to get a clean remote desktop working with anything but mainline Ubuntu. I mean one that is remote desktop compatible with tablets. Only Ubuntu works cleanly. Every other distribution has one problem or another related to clicking, or hanging, or crashing of the desktop.
So I read the article and only one thought went through my mind.
"Are you fucking kidding me?"
So here is the deal, I get a worse user interface, get to pay more for an operating system that offers virtually no benefit. Man I am so glad I shifting to OSX and Linux around the time Windows 8 was announced and released to devs. This is going to bite them in the ass and IMO with what I am experiencing with OSX and Linux, Microsoft really does suck!
And this is from a used to be Microsoft development author, Regional Director, and speaker.
BTW as a sidenote I actually really like Ubuntu Unity. At first disliked it, but have gotten quite accustomed to it. Now the other Linux distributions seem "old".