This was on Slashdot a couple times before. Accenture and Microsoft obviously botched the application developement. I wouldn't blame the tools or the platform if something goes wrong. Maybe they chose the wrong tools and platforms. Maybe not. Difficult to say.
I never knew Accenture was a software developement company. I thought they were in labor leasing. Then again, I can't help wondering. Usually when I hear of stuff that isn't allowed to go down it is some expensive Unix contract with HP (HP-UX), IBM (Aix) or SUN (Solaris). With a lot of redundancy built in. Red Hat thrives in that market, because Linux runs good on comparibly cheap x86 hardware, whereas the other three mentioned have their own fairly expensive hardware.
And then there is always the big iron. Really expensive (I only heard about it). But then again, shouldn't a stock exchange be able to afford that?
You can work with any Apple product perfectly, because they come with Steve Jobs magic, that will make any of their products perfect in every way no matter what. It could reboot every 2 min, but still never crash. It could be doa, but still be the nicest thing to have on a rack ever. It is just soooooooo (mhmhm) perfect.
Have you ever thought how you make the PERFECT Apple fanboy? Glossy screens are so bad, and Apple is a really stupid company for putting them in (like everyone else, but I have seen Apple put them in desktop lcds, and I have yet to see Apple even offer the option of non glare). But if glossy is fine, Apple is not stupid. So glossy must be fine.
Don't forget to get one without a glossy screen. It will limit your choices, but you can't work with a glossy screen. Trust me. These days the only models where they offer the option to get non-glossy will be business models. They are slightly more expensive, but also usually more durable.
Second, you should stop the dual-booting and start virtualization. VirtualBox or VMWare or whatever. I don't use VMWare, because they didn't have a deb package last time I tried and the rpm installation was pretty ugly.
For virtualization the best idea is to get virtualization support in the processor. AMD-VT or Intel-V. The cheaper Intel models dont have it. Which I think is very disapointing. I don't know why Intel does this and I don't like it at all. Because virtualization gets more and more important. Maybe they think they can sell new processors later, when people will need that feature. Because these days most people don't need new computers any more. Whatever it is: I usually would opt for AMD, but that REALLY litmits your choices, because business machines with AMD are hard to find. The only model for a good price I could find was the HP Compaq 615. It comes with glossy and non-glossy screens.
I also like the Latitude 2100 netbook: No drive bay at all, no CD. If you need stuff, get them USB. Much cheaper than proprietary drive bay drives and features.
Obviously you will need to use VirtualBox (or whatever you prefer) to use other operating systems. And the Atom processor is not very fast. So maybe you won't take that one after all.
But netbooks are very nice, because they run very long and are very portable. The Latitude 2100 is the only netbook that comes with non-glossy screen.
Brother has a whole bunch of different models. Even one with a scanner on top that does copying, faxing and scanning. They don't have chip protected toners, so you can get toners from anyone that builts them. Completely legal. They have network, no network, wireless...
Over here in Germany you can get the best deals on the standard network model, because they sell large volumes. So it is 20% cheaper than the sticker price.
On pricing you have to check what they have in the US.
Nowdays the hardware is all the same. All smartphones have 3G, Wifi, GPS and Bluetooth, some have FM receivers. The difference now is all in the software. As much as I dislike the IPhone I guess it still has an edge over other models in that area.
Anyways, less and less power consumption in different parts of the phone could be new way for the hardware makers to differentiate themselves.
Samsung for example makes phones with Windows Mobile, Symbian, Android and their own Smartphone OS. HTC competes with them with their Windows Mobile and Android phones.
A friend of mine recently got a Mac. He is a longtime Palm user and has a Palm Treo 680. I assumed that iSync would support the Hotsync and thus all devices powered by Palm OS.
I was wrong. If you take a look at this: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2824 You will see that the Tungston and Zire family of phones is supported. No Treo at all. According to him (I only had him on the phone) iSync didn't sync to his phone. He has a roommate who is a Mac fanboy (main reason for the Mac, because he is not a computer geek and onsite support at home is pretty cool) who initially set up everything so I suppose he would have set up iSync if it had worked. So Apple support for Palm seems to be rather spotty at best. No Centro or Treo Pro like the website/blog that Slashdot links to were supported anyways. How can Apple drop support for something they never supported in the first place?
Palm has a very good PIM (actually used to have unfortunately, since developement seems to have stopped). So good that I used to give it to people looking for a simple PIM for their computers who never heard of Palm. They also have a version for the Mac: http://www.palm.com/europe/en/support/palmdt4_mac.html
Hopefully this will run under Snow Leopard, or maybe Palm will put another revision out if it doesn't.
Anyone here who got his Palm Treo or Centro to run with iSync? And if so, how?
I read a report by a Chinese doctor who fled the country and said some donors were still alive when they started removing the organs. The donors were killed by a shooting squad and some weren't hit properly. The doctors were ordered to remove the organs anyways ASAP.
For the previous versions of Quake binary blob drivers were always required AFAIK. And the state of free 3D drivers has never been better. It used to be that the only free Linux 3D drivers were for Intel. Back in 2005 Doom 3 was playable in Intel?
Maybe he is raising the issue, because kernel developers threatened to pull the plug on binary blobs. Other than that I see no reason why he should be complaining now.
They already divided everyone up into two groups: Male and female. Because they decided that males do have an unfair advantage over females in sports and thus should not compete against each other. If someone is found to be male they are not banned, they are simply asked to compete against males.
I suppose the summary is a bit off. They don't really want to find out if she has an advantage, but rather if she still fully qualifies for having the distinct disadavantage of being genetically female.
Lots of cheap Intel processors don't even have Intel VT, while most of the AMD processors in the same price range have it enabled. While I like the fact that some of the new Pentium processors run really cool, I would never consider buying a new processor without virtualization support. Yet most of the current cheap machines (laptops and boxen) that come with Intel use processors without virtualization. Kinda limits your choices. But then again I always liked AMD better.
And some Linux musicians told me Reaper is currently the only viable music production software for Linux. Rosegarden and Ardour being the two open source contenders not quite there yet.
You should really read the thread at a high threshold (I usually choose 4). People touched upon all the important point. Being first and foremost: There is no problem or any violation of spirit selling GPL'd software. I think it is pretty interesting that a seasoned open source developer has missed such a basic point about the GPL.
There are issues with the appstore and putting GPL'd software (for free or at a price, doesn't matter) on it. Those are addressed in GPLv3 and are also already covered in this thread.
Is it even legal to put GPLv3 software on appstore anyways?
Mind me, I am a capitalist libertarian, but that does not make me stupid. Corporations work that way. Always. They always try to make more money and extend their market share. Apple has learned a lot from Microsoft. Especially how to use a monopoly (or near monopoly) in one market to support their product in other markets. That is why for any market to work you need strictly enforced rules (read: regulation). How do you think a game of basketball would look like without rules or referees to enforce them. Especially if the players are not guided by their morals and conscience, but each of them has a board that has to listen to stockholders that want performance. I always think its funny when people "believe" in large corporations or their "moral" way of doing sth.
Their combination of ITunes and IPods is dominating the market for digital music. Both in listening devices and in online retail. The IPhone was developed, because Jobs was afraid, that people would stop using dedicated players to listen to their MP3s and just use their phones (I do that as well). When he was greatly disappointed with the IPod-Itunes-Phone from Motorola Apple started on the IPhone. And now they are pushing the IPhone in part using their dominance in the online music retail business.
Cheap hardware (mobo) RAID controllers are actually SoftRAID controllers that implement the RAID functions through the bios and the driver. You don't want those, because if the controller fails you might lose your data, because you have to get the same controller, because the data is stored in a proprietary format of that card or mobo chip.
So it is much safer and saner to use the os for software RAID.
Why you want to go with FAT32 is beyond me, though. Your data is much safer with NTFS. Linux has good NTFS drivers now anyways.
One is to download an image and pay for it to reuse it (or not, if it is public domain) changes it (as little as you may want, changing the file name is already a change, if someone for example tags a lot of images that is work he or she put into it) and then put a new copright (or public domain) on it and then sell it (or not). This is what I understand the author calls copyfraud.
The other thing is straight fraud. Pursuing me (or people who downloaded from my server )for my own images after taking my images and putting a copyright on them. Sometimes large companies do that without even knowing it. But that is still wrong. And if you do it on purpose it is no different than stealing my car and selling it back to me.
I just believe those two things are very different from each other.
Will you live with having someone copy your work, claim exclusive proprietary ownership of that work (i.e., copyright), and pursue everyone else who uses your work?
By analogy (not/.-approved car analogy, but still):
You can throw cat food out for all the feral kitties living in your neighborhood, but what can you do if one cat drives all the others away? What if that cat attacks you to take away the cat food you have?
If they download from my server, then the image is public domain. It is even stated in the image tag. If they donwload from their server and they slapped a copyright on it I can't do anything about it. That is public domain. They have to pay for bandwidth after all. If they try to pusue someone who downloaded from me (using my copyright) then I guess they will have a weak case. But if I download images from the public domain and use them to create my art and I want to be paid for it, it is my choice.
I am planning on releasing a lot of digital images I made to the public domain. For free. And if someone takes those and enhances them in any way or uses them to make their own art (like sampling in the music industry) they are free to make their own choice about which copyright to use.
If this enhancement process only means a bot will download them and rename them to sell them on a different website then I will have to live with that.
If people WANT to pay money for books they could download for free on project Gutenberg then this is their problem. Right now an artist in the music business makes 3-5 % from any purchase. The rest of the money goes into advertising, packaging, logistics and so on.
Where is the big leap from 3-5 to 0-5 %? Copyfraud is essentially the same. If I were to nicely layout a classic from Shakespeare, print it and buy ads for it, I want to sell books, not get some idiot in my back telling my I am committing "copyfraud".
Mousavi ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mir-Hossein_Mousavi ) is not a reformer. He was prime minister during some of the worst days of the revolution. He held high offices and oversaw the imprisonment of tens thousands of peaceful opposition figures (or just ordinary people caught drinking wine for example). Many of whom were tortured and/or killed. For some insight into those horrible times you can check out Persepolis ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persepolis_(comics) ) movie or comic.
Mousavi seems to be a member of a so called "reformist alliance". Former president Khatami also belongs to the same group. He was elected, because many people seemed to hope they could bring some change using the elections. Khatami himself said that he is not a reformer. But still tried to ease up on the restrictions governing the daily lives of the Iranians. It didn't help. Other "more hardcore" elements of the government that are not controlled by the president and the parliament cracked down and reversed changes. As a result the public grew weary of the so called "reformist alliance" that could not (or didn't want to) actually reform anything.
The whole thing looks like trouble within the supposedly ruling class of clerics. Why do so many people protest on the streets? Most likely it wouldn't make a difference if Mousavi was elected. Also AFAIK the Pasdaran actually control Iran. A very corrupt military organization ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Army_of_the_Guardians_of_the_Islamic_Revolution ).
Can anyone shed some light on this whole thing? Could it not be that Ahmadinejad actually got 60% of the popular vote? After all he is a populist. Maybe he is popular after all. Why would the rulers of Iran risk a popular uprising for nothing. Khatami couldn't do anything at all. He didn't have much actual power. Same with Ahmadinejad. He is just a puppet. Mousavi would also just be a puppet.
I saw the video. Why is this better than a good php web forum software with some Web 2.0 (e.g. JavaScript interactivity) thrown on top? Email will always keep the bulk of messages. And if we were to use chat in a more serious manner, we would get the same result.
What I saw in Google Wave could be implemented using email,p2p chat or forum software.
I suppose I am just not smart enough to see how ingenious Google was with Wave. But what if more than 80% of the users out there are the same? (I am not saying that I am in the top 20% smart people, I am just smart with computers).
Mainly money. The yearly subsidies to the German railroad system amount to about 20 billion Euros (by the German state). Germany has the best (in comfort and densest of) railroad system in the world. Also the most expensive one (in tickets). 20 billion Euros come in addition to that. Those 20 billion are about 3% of our GDP. Every. Single. Year. Imagine what you could get for that if you spend it on education. There are always trade-offs. And even though the US is not the best in public transportation this does not mean it is all bad. Or that it couldn't be fixed. Bus lines are easily installed and can run on roads. And the US has a very good road system. Busses can then run on hybrid or natural gas. They are very flexible. As compared to trains.
In the blog post the project lead is talking about working on better MS Office support. I would love that. Especially MS Office 2007 SP2. Add a little Samba gui integration into Ubuntu (share folders and drives point and click) and I am ready to roll out Linux in my companies. Seriously. Myself I have been a Debian desktop user since Slink.
Come again please? The margins in that market are so razor thin, that I wouldn't call it lucrative by any means. There was a huge run on netbooks and it might have been somewhat profitable for a while, but now? And it becomes worse as new players come in.
I would say it is less lucrative than the traditional notebook. But what do I know?
I never watched Larry King Live more than a few minutes because of that reason. Did that guy ever ask a question that was not scripted by the guest or their team?
Slashdot Mirror
This was on Slashdot a couple times before. Accenture and Microsoft obviously botched the application developement. I wouldn't blame the tools or the platform if something goes wrong. Maybe they chose the wrong tools and platforms. Maybe not. Difficult to say.
I never knew Accenture was a software developement company. I thought they were in labor leasing. Then again, I can't help wondering. Usually when I hear of stuff that isn't allowed to go down it is some expensive Unix contract with HP (HP-UX), IBM (Aix) or SUN (Solaris). With a lot of redundancy built in. Red Hat thrives in that market, because Linux runs good on comparibly cheap x86 hardware, whereas the other three mentioned have their own fairly expensive hardware.
And then there is always the big iron. Really expensive (I only heard about it). But then again, shouldn't a stock exchange be able to afford that?
You can work with any Apple product perfectly, because they come with Steve Jobs magic, that will make any of their products perfect in every way no matter what. It could reboot every 2 min, but still never crash. It could be doa, but still be the nicest thing to have on a rack ever. It is just soooooooo (mhmhm) perfect.
Have you ever thought how you make the PERFECT Apple fanboy? Glossy screens are so bad, and Apple is a really stupid company for putting them in (like everyone else, but I have seen Apple put them in desktop lcds, and I have yet to see Apple even offer the option of non glare). But if glossy is fine, Apple is not stupid. So glossy must be fine.
Don't forget to get one without a glossy screen. It will limit your choices, but you can't work with a glossy screen. Trust me. These days the only models where they offer the option to get non-glossy will be business models. They are slightly more expensive, but also usually more durable.
Second, you should stop the dual-booting and start virtualization. VirtualBox or VMWare or whatever. I don't use VMWare, because they didn't have a deb package last time I tried and the rpm installation was pretty ugly.
For virtualization the best idea is to get virtualization support in the processor. AMD-VT or Intel-V. The cheaper Intel models dont have it. Which I think is very disapointing. I don't know why Intel does this and I don't like it at all. Because virtualization gets more and more important. Maybe they think they can sell new processors later, when people will need that feature. Because these days most people don't need new computers any more. Whatever it is: I usually would opt for AMD, but that REALLY litmits your choices, because business machines with AMD are hard to find. The only model for a good price I could find was the HP Compaq 615. It comes with glossy and non-glossy screens.
I also like the Latitude 2100 netbook:
No drive bay at all, no CD. If you need stuff, get them USB. Much cheaper than proprietary drive bay drives and features.
Obviously you will need to use VirtualBox (or whatever you prefer) to use other operating systems. And the Atom processor is not very fast. So maybe you won't take that one after all.
But netbooks are very nice, because they run very long and are very portable. The Latitude 2100 is the only netbook that comes with non-glossy screen.
Brother has a whole bunch of different models. Even one with a scanner on top that does copying, faxing and scanning. They don't have chip protected toners, so you can get toners from anyone that builts them. Completely legal. ...
They have network, no network, wireless
Over here in Germany you can get the best deals on the standard network model, because they sell large volumes. So it is 20% cheaper than the sticker price.
On pricing you have to check what they have in the US.
Nowdays the hardware is all the same. All smartphones have 3G, Wifi, GPS and Bluetooth, some have FM receivers. The difference now is all in the software. As much as I dislike the IPhone I guess it still has an edge over other models in that area.
Anyways, less and less power consumption in different parts of the phone could be new way for the hardware makers to differentiate themselves.
Samsung for example makes phones with Windows Mobile, Symbian, Android and their own Smartphone OS. HTC competes with them with their Windows Mobile and Android phones.
A friend of mine recently got a Mac. He is a longtime Palm user and has a Palm Treo 680. I assumed that iSync would support the Hotsync and thus all devices powered by Palm OS.
I was wrong. If you take a look at this:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2824
You will see that the Tungston and Zire family of phones is supported. No Treo at all. According to him (I only had him on the phone) iSync didn't sync to his phone. He has a roommate who is a Mac fanboy (main reason for the Mac, because he is not a computer geek and onsite support at home is pretty cool) who initially set up everything so I suppose he would have set up iSync if it had worked. So Apple support for Palm seems to be rather spotty at best. No Centro or Treo Pro like the website/blog that Slashdot links to were supported anyways. How can Apple drop support for something they never supported in the first place?
Palm has a very good PIM (actually used to have unfortunately, since developement seems to have stopped). So good that I used to give it to people looking for a simple PIM for their computers who never heard of Palm. They also have a version for the Mac:
http://www.palm.com/europe/en/support/palmdt4_mac.html
Hopefully this will run under Snow Leopard, or maybe Palm will put another revision out if it doesn't.
Anyone here who got his Palm Treo or Centro to run with iSync? And if so, how?
I read a report by a Chinese doctor who fled the country and said some donors were still alive when they started removing the organs. The donors were killed by a shooting squad and some weren't hit properly. The doctors were ordered to remove the organs anyways ASAP.
For the previous versions of Quake binary blob drivers were always required AFAIK. And the state of free 3D drivers has never been better. It used to be that the only free Linux 3D drivers were for Intel. Back in 2005 Doom 3 was playable in Intel?
Maybe he is raising the issue, because kernel developers threatened to pull the plug on binary blobs. Other than that I see no reason why he should be complaining now.
They already divided everyone up into two groups: Male and female. Because they decided that males do have an unfair advantage over females in sports and thus should not compete against each other. If someone is found to be male they are not banned, they are simply asked to compete against males.
I suppose the summary is a bit off. They don't really want to find out if she has an advantage, but rather if she still fully qualifies for having the distinct disadavantage of being genetically female.
Lots of cheap Intel processors don't even have Intel VT, while most of the AMD processors in the same price range have it enabled. While I like the fact that some of the new Pentium processors run really cool, I would never consider buying a new processor without virtualization support. Yet most of the current cheap machines (laptops and boxen) that come with Intel use processors without virtualization. Kinda limits your choices. But then again I always liked AMD better.
If he goes as far as deleting that stuff maybe this is about software patents. If he didn't like your suggestions he probabely would just ignore them.
And some Linux musicians told me Reaper is currently the only viable music production software for Linux. Rosegarden and Ardour being the two open source contenders not quite there yet.
You should really read the thread at a high threshold (I usually choose 4). People touched upon all the important point. Being first and foremost: There is no problem or any violation of spirit selling GPL'd software. I think it is pretty interesting that a seasoned open source developer has missed such a basic point about the GPL.
There are issues with the appstore and putting GPL'd software (for free or at a price, doesn't matter) on it. Those are addressed in GPLv3 and are also already covered in this thread.
Is it even legal to put GPLv3 software on appstore anyways?
Mind me, I am a capitalist libertarian, but that does not make me stupid. Corporations work that way. Always. They always try to make more money and extend their market share. Apple has learned a lot from Microsoft. Especially how to use a monopoly (or near monopoly) in one market to support their product in other markets.
That is why for any market to work you need strictly enforced rules (read: regulation). How do you think a game of basketball would look like without rules or referees to enforce them. Especially if the players are not guided by their morals and conscience, but each of them has a board that has to listen to stockholders that want performance.
I always think its funny when people "believe" in large corporations or their "moral" way of doing sth.
Their combination of ITunes and IPods is dominating the market for digital music. Both in listening devices and in online retail. The IPhone was developed, because Jobs was afraid, that people would stop using dedicated players to listen to their MP3s and just use their phones (I do that as well). When he was greatly disappointed with the IPod-Itunes-Phone from Motorola Apple started on the IPhone.
And now they are pushing the IPhone in part using their dominance in the online music retail business.
Big surprise here.
Cheap hardware (mobo) RAID controllers are actually SoftRAID controllers that implement the RAID functions through the bios and the driver. You don't want those, because if the controller fails you might lose your data, because you have to get the same controller, because the data is stored in a proprietary format of that card or mobo chip.
So it is much safer and saner to use the os for software RAID.
Why you want to go with FAT32 is beyond me, though. Your data is much safer with NTFS. Linux has good NTFS drivers now anyways.
You should patent that idea ASAP. I heard that this by far the fastest way to kill a business. That is why it was modded funny.
I think those are very different things.
One is to download an image and pay for it to reuse it (or not, if it is public domain) changes it (as little as you may want, changing the file name is already a change, if someone for example tags a lot of images that is work he or she put into it) and then put a new copright (or public domain) on it and then sell it (or not). This is what I understand the author calls copyfraud.
The other thing is straight fraud. Pursuing me (or people who downloaded from my server )for my own images after taking my images and putting a copyright on them. Sometimes large companies do that without even knowing it. But that is still wrong. And if you do it on purpose it is no different than stealing my car and selling it back to me.
I just believe those two things are very different from each other.
Will you live with having someone copy your work, claim exclusive proprietary ownership of that work (i.e., copyright), and pursue everyone else who uses your work?
By analogy (not /.-approved car analogy, but still):
You can throw cat food out for all the feral kitties living in your neighborhood, but what can you do if one cat drives all the others away? What if that cat attacks you to take away the cat food you have?
If they download from my server, then the image is public domain. It is even stated in the image tag. If they donwload from their server and they slapped a copyright on it I can't do anything about it. That is public domain. They have to pay for bandwidth after all. If they try to pusue someone who downloaded from me (using my copyright) then I guess they will have a weak case. But if I download images from the public domain and use them to create my art and I want to be paid for it, it is my choice.
I am planning on releasing a lot of digital images I made to the public domain. For free. And if someone takes those and enhances them in any way or uses them to make their own art (like sampling in the music industry) they are free to make their own choice about which copyright to use.
If this enhancement process only means a bot will download them and rename them to sell them on a different website then I will have to live with that.
If people WANT to pay money for books they could download for free on project Gutenberg then this is their problem. Right now an artist in the music business makes 3-5 % from any purchase. The rest of the money goes into advertising, packaging, logistics and so on.
Where is the big leap from 3-5 to 0-5 %? Copyfraud is essentially the same. If I were to nicely layout a classic from Shakespeare, print it and buy ads for it, I want to sell books, not get some idiot in my back telling my I am committing "copyfraud".
I don't get the whole Iran thing at all.
What do I know:
Mousavi ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mir-Hossein_Mousavi ) is not a reformer. He was prime minister during some of the worst days of the revolution. He held high offices and oversaw the imprisonment of tens thousands of peaceful opposition figures (or just ordinary people caught drinking wine for example). Many of whom were tortured and/or killed. For some insight into those horrible times you can check out Persepolis ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persepolis_(comics) ) movie or comic.
Mousavi seems to be a member of a so called "reformist alliance". Former president Khatami also belongs to the same group. He was elected, because many people seemed to hope they could bring some change using the elections. Khatami himself said that he is not a reformer. But still tried to ease up on the restrictions governing the daily lives of the Iranians. It didn't help. Other "more hardcore" elements of the government that are not controlled by the president and the parliament cracked down and reversed changes. As a result the public grew weary of the so called "reformist alliance" that could not (or didn't want to) actually reform anything.
The whole thing looks like trouble within the supposedly ruling class of clerics. Why do so many people protest on the streets? Most likely it wouldn't make a difference if Mousavi was elected. Also AFAIK the Pasdaran actually control Iran. A very corrupt military organization ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Army_of_the_Guardians_of_the_Islamic_Revolution ).
Can anyone shed some light on this whole thing? Could it not be that Ahmadinejad actually got 60% of the popular vote? After all he is a populist. Maybe he is popular after all. Why would the rulers of Iran risk a popular uprising for nothing. Khatami couldn't do anything at all. He didn't have much actual power. Same with Ahmadinejad. He is just a puppet. Mousavi would also just be a puppet.
I saw the video. Why is this better than a good php web forum software with some Web 2.0 (e.g. JavaScript interactivity) thrown on top? Email will always keep the bulk of messages. And if we were to use chat in a more serious manner, we would get the same result.
What I saw in Google Wave could be implemented using email,p2p chat or forum software.
I suppose I am just not smart enough to see how ingenious Google was with Wave. But what if more than 80% of the users out there are the same? (I am not saying that I am in the top 20% smart people, I am just smart with computers).
Mainly money. The yearly subsidies to the German railroad system amount to about 20 billion Euros (by the German state). Germany has the best (in comfort and densest of) railroad system in the world. Also the most expensive one (in tickets). 20 billion Euros come in addition to that. Those 20 billion are about 3% of our GDP. Every. Single. Year. Imagine what you could get for that if you spend it on education.
There are always trade-offs. And even though the US is not the best in public transportation this does not mean it is all bad. Or that it couldn't be fixed. Bus lines are easily installed and can run on roads. And the US has a very good road system. Busses can then run on hybrid or natural gas. They are very flexible. As compared to trains.
In the blog post the project lead is talking about working on better MS Office support. I would love that. Especially MS Office 2007 SP2.
Add a little Samba gui integration into Ubuntu (share folders and drives point and click) and I am ready to roll out Linux in my companies. Seriously. Myself I have been a Debian desktop user since Slink.
Come again please? The margins in that market are so razor thin, that I wouldn't call it lucrative by any means. There was a huge run on netbooks and it might have been somewhat profitable for a while, but now? And it becomes worse as new players come in.
I would say it is less lucrative than the traditional notebook. But what do I know?
I never watched Larry King Live more than a few minutes because of that reason. Did that guy ever ask a question that was not scripted by the guest or their team?