The reporter was told to (re)condition the battery. From the article:
After making arrangements to recharge at the Norwich station, I located the proper adapter in the trunk, plugged in and walked to the only warm place nearby, Butch’s Luncheonette and Breakfast Club, an establishment (smoking allowed) where only members can buy a cup of coffee or a plate of eggs. But the owners let me wait there while the Model S drank its juice. Tesla’s experts said that pumping in a little energy would help restore the power lost overnight as a result of the cold weather, and after an hour they cleared me to resume the trip to Milford.
Looking back, I should have bought a membership to Butch’s and spent a few hours there while the car charged. The displayed range never reached the number of miles remaining to Milford, and as I limped along at about 45 miles per hour I saw increasingly dire dashboard warnings to recharge immediately. Mr. Merendino, the product planner, found an E.V. charging station about five miles away.
My questions are:
When they cleared you to go, was that with respect to the conditioning of the battery? That is, did they clear you insofar as the battery conditioning was concerned, or did they say something to the effect of "ok stop charging and just go regardless of any other warnings/messages" ?
If the display range never reached the number of miles remaining to Milford, why the fuck did you not call the support team back and point this out to them? Instead, you ignored a very clear message regarding your inability to reach Milford, and then proceeded to complain when that became a reality
Let's put politics aside for a bit. Why should _THIS_ particular Ron Paul be allowed to "claim" ronpaul.com over some other person named Ron Paul. That combination of first and last name is not unique (http://howmanyofme.com/people/Ron_Paul/). Why should one person have a stronger claim to a domain name simply because they are more recognized by the public? I could understand the fight for MyBusinessName.com if your business is named MyBusinessName and said name is not some generic word/phrase. But whether it's Ron Paul or Michael Jordan or Joe Schmoe, I just don't see how it would be fair to all the other Ron Paul, Michael Jordan, or Joe Shmoe people.
Let me also add that I do support the memo in any way as there are so many holes in the wording that you could drive a semi-truck through it. It is clear, however, that the intent of the memo is to enable the US to go after citizens who joins with enemy forces and attacks the US. What is very poorly defined, however, is means by which such a person is determined to have "joined enemy forces."
As the title suggests, please read the fucking article (PDF, not the lame NBC summary), for fuck's sake, before commenting. Let me quote from the very first paragraph for those too lazy:
Here the Department of Justice concludes only that where the following three conditions are met, a US operation using lethal force in a foreign country against a US citizen who is a senior operational leader of al-Qa'ida or an associated force would be lawful;
This is not a memo on how to "assassinate" just any US citizen. Rather, it is a memo on how when lethal force can be applied to a "citizen gone bad" if you will -- if one could even call "a senior operational leader of al-Qa'ida or an associated force" a US citizen (see: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1481). What's really sad is that the memo is plastered with the NBC logo all over, making it hard to read. Given this, and the apparently lack of reading comprehension and cherry picking of words, it seems NBC was too eager to up their readership with bold claims of assassinations of US citizens.
Chrome OS is a threat in that it enables users to easily make use of Google's applications. As far as operating systems go, Windows 8 is the biggest threat to MS (in the sense that it is probably causing a lot of users to steer away from MS). But as a platform for using Google's services, MS definitely will have to worry seeing as how many of Google's applications (e.g. Google Docs) eat into Microsoft's profits.
This is a terrible article whose main question is: does the side with larger numbers have a better chance to win?
I have absolutely no idea why they chose to use "does math win?" since there is absolutely no mathematics mentioned at all in the article, unless you equate "larger army" with "math." The answer is: yes, there is a good chance, even if the larger army consists of considerably weaker units.
The more interesting question is: should we continue to devote resources into smarter systems for defending against missile strikes given that it is possible to never completely "catch up" in this cat and mouse game?
The FAQ does not say it requires internet access to actually use the products in their original form (only to upgrade, manage account, save to SkyDrive, etc).
Here is what the FAQ in your link says for the "cloud" version of office (i.e. Office 365):
Internet access is required to install and activate all the latest releases of Office suites and all Office 365 plans.
Internet access is also required to manage, update, and access subscription versions of Office, including Office 365 Home Premium. You need to go online to www.office.com/myaccount to manage your subscription account. For example, if you want to install Office on another PC or device, or to change billing options. You need to connect to the Internet regularly to keep your version of Office up to date and to benefit from automatic upgrades.
Internet connectivity is also required to access the Office 365 additional features such as SkyDrive and Skype world minutes.
You having to put money aside for continual re-traininig is really:) not a problem for cloud service provider. It's a problem for you - deal with it!
That's the point. If the cloud provider updates their end, and I am running a business using their software, I'm stuck having to deal with it (training-wise) as you put it. As a customer of said cloud service, I would be pretty pissed off if suddenly my company was forced into having to upgrade when what my company was using worked just fine.
I hated the new interface that came with 2007 (Fluent User Interface) and 2010 was no improvement. I did not have a choice, though, because that is what they install on our work machines. And I just have to deal with it. With cloud services, when the provider updates the software in a way that disrupts productivity, who is held accountable? When Windows Vista came out, people had the option to not upgrade. But when everything is on the cloud, you don't have the choice to not upgrade anymore. What if you don't care for the changes in the newer version? Or worse that the new features break the existing workflow? Suddenly companies are now going to have to leave aside money for re-training programs in the even that the cloud service providers make drastic changes.
...will always be the user's internet connection -- not just in terms of being connected, but likely also having sufficient bandwidth. I can appreciate the usefulness of "cloud computing" -- which is really just an extension of dumb terminals and network storage packaged in this new buzzphrase. However, it really only makes sense in environments in which they have control over the network availability as well. Even Google Docs, with no price tag, is only as nice as my network connection.
What this does for MS Office is that it now has a new form of DRM -- in the sense that you can only run office if you connect to Microsoft -- and they don' t have to advertise it as being DRM.
Unfortunately I have no mod points to mod the parent down, but author of the parent post clearly did not read the article. From TFA,
Apple requires its suppliers to return the workers back to a school chosen by the family and finance their education. "In addition, the children must continue to receive income matching what they received when they were employed. We also follow up regularly to ensure that the children remain in school and that the suppliers continue to uphold their financial commitment," wrote Apple in its latest report.
Parent highly over-rated. As part of the Slashdot crowd, I actually did not think Reiser was innocent. While there may have been supporters, I find it hard to believe there is any actual hard evidence you could provide to back up your claim that "the Slashdot crowd was screaming for blood about the injustice when he was found guilty... right up to the point where Reiser led the police to his wife's body."
As for your "betrayal of trust" claim -- I call bullshit. When you leave your networks completely open to anyone who is not even at all related to the institution, there is no such thing as "trust." It's plain-and-simple "we don't care." If it were the case that only, say, students were allowed to use their networks, then perhaps you "trust" argument might holds some water. Your argument is as silly as when bank leaves all of its deposits out in the open and "trusts" that not only its members but the general public will not steal any of that money.
If Aaron had taken that plea bargain, do you think there would be much scrutiny regarding over-reaching prosecutors using their powers for political gain? Or would JSTOR still release 4.5 million articles of research for free? Despite the great tragedy, many are hoping that this tragedy will result in a lot of positive changes (that is the hope, anyway).
Your speculation on Hotz is just that -- speculation. Why do you automatically assume that Hotz had no chance of winning? (He had jailbroken other devices before, and it was legal). Who's to say he didn't get paid a large sum for his agreement to never hack Sony products? After all, Sony would have had some pretty bad PR for destroying a kid's future, even if he were guilty (but who's to say) of breaking the law with respect to hacking the PS3. However, I digress with speculation -- much like your own. Let's stick to what little facts that are available.
You cannot abuse a system in which there are virtually no laws. MIT's wireless networks were open to anyone and everyone. As for the JSTOR articles -- you don't get to read them for free. Your tax dollars helped pay for the subscription fees that the public libraries and universities have to pay in order to get full access to JSTOR. What is really ironic is that we now have to pay extra (in the form of taxes which go to support these subscriptions) for access to materials we already paid for (in the form of research grants, etc. given by public entities such as the NSF for example).
Longevity was not mentioned in the article, but I did ponder the question of whether what the scientists find may actually lead to "the fountain of youth." Imagine if you could suddenly stop aging once you reach your "preferred" age!
Even with a cloud network that comes equipped with millions of graphics cards, I just don't see how they are going to get around the bandwidth bottleneck. Unless the only games being offered are board games, I just don't see how anything like an FPS being played via cloud computing due to obvious things like:
1. bandwidth needed to download the images to update the gamer's display
2. network latency causing input delays
Even with great compression algorithms, you're still looking at a problem of somehow refreshing the display at a minimum of 30 fps. I cannot help but speculate you would need either large bandwidth with low latency or special hardware to uncompress the image stream.
But the most important question is, what the hell happens when either the cloud is down, or when you lose your internet connection?
As of 2:00pm EST it seems the links are still available. I even downloaded and installed the programs to see if they actually work, and they do (only tested Acrobat Pro). Anyway, I have uninstalled it seeing as how I only use Adobe's products to read PDF files, and there are newer versions with security updates via their free Reader.
Even if they did manage to get the money out, it all had to go somewhere. Why is it not as simple as looking up where the money went and going from there to determine the culprit? Am I missing something obvious?
While it's great to see this sort of technology, I cannot help but wonder if we will actually ever have LCD contact lens in actual use. The issue I have is that anything displayed on the lens will never be visible to the person wearing the lens as their eyes cannot physically focus on the image. Imagine trying to view a screen that is literally sitting on your eyeball -- how would you possibly focus your eyes to view something that close?!
If Intel does do this, then it would be pretty lucrative for someone to step in and create a "socket-board" with the CPU's pre-installed onto the socket boards. Motherboard makers can continue to do what they have been doing... ABIT did almost just this very thing with their BP6 motherboard and paved the way for enthusiasts to build their own SMP machines
I'm sure everyone is also interested in seeing how the performance compares to drivers on other operating systems (Windows, Mac OS X). Is there a link to such a comparison? It helps to put things into perspective. (I'm too lazy to google it =)
If you are going to be pedantic about this just for the sake of being pedantic then consider this. Anyone could work hard on a serious intellectual problem for more than 4 hours. They could in fact literally spend their entire life (and even be considered crazy/insane) and not get anywhere. However, you seem to have confused working hard for more than 4 hours vs obtaining a useful result/conclusion/solution within 4 hours. What would Dirac say to Andrew Wiles -- a mathematical counter example in every sense of the phrase to your Dirac quote?
Though it sounds insane, they probably left out the some important details. When I was a mathematics graduate student, I too spent a LOT of time thinking about mathematics -- a lot of it was for fun. Did I spend 80 hours a week thinking about mathematics? Probably not, but likely close. However, it was not as though I locked myself up in a room and had someone from the real world slide slices of pizza underneath the door so that I could do mathematics. A lot of theoretical science happens in one's mind, and that can be done anywhere, anytime. On the other hand, you could not do this if your job was to be a surgeon or pilot -- it's not the same. Mind you, all that thinking does get exhausting even if only mentally. However, if you want to ever be a "star" in anything -- sports, medicine, mathematics, etc -- you have to "practice" (i.e. put in extra time). Maybe 80+ hours per week is a bit much, but it is not completely impossible in some areas of study. Of course, you could just go the "average" route and still be "ok" in the end.
The author also stated that you would run it with a dock / keyboard / mouse / monitor
That's his argument for having a tablet over a desktop... to which any sane person would have to ask: why not just get a laptop or netbook, or even an actual desktop. Getting a tablet w/ those accessories defeats the purpose of having a tablet.
All the apps that matter to most users (and virtually all businesses) can be run on Windows just fine, thanks (in fact most exclusively run on Windows). So why have an Android tablet and an Android phone, plus a Windows laptop and / or PC. Why not just have the one device to rule them all? At the very least, Windows 8 stands poised to decimate Android tablet sales overnight. As I mentioned in my Microsoft Office article, running genuine productivity software on a tablet is still something of a rarity (emphasis mine), while Microsoft’s Surface Tablet is the first tablet device that’s aiming at exactly this market, first and foremost.
Perhaps the most common business "app" would be Microsoft's office suite. No one is going to be creating powerpoints, word documents, excel sheets, etc. on a tablet or a mobile phone. The tablet is just not designed for that. You need a keyboard and mouse (or the other option is some massive investment into training people to deal with no keyboard/mouse). Windows 8 stands to be the laughing stock of OS's if they do not address usability issues on the desktop. Until then, I only see it being acceptable on a tablet -- or on desktops with fingertouch input displays
The author pretty much defeated his own argument with: running genuine productivity software on a tablet is still something of a rarity -- it will remain for pretty much any application needing quick input from a keyboard/mouse.
If by "force" you mean the philosophy behind using GPL code, then that has been around long before Nvidia even put out binary drivers. The freedom here is not freedom to do whatever the hell you please, but freedom to take the current source and modify however you wish -- provided you contribute back by sharing your modifications. No one is forcing Nvidia to open their drivers -- they can choose to not do so as they have been doing.
Slashdot Mirror
After making arrangements to recharge at the Norwich station, I located the proper adapter in the trunk, plugged in and walked to the only warm place nearby, Butch’s Luncheonette and Breakfast Club, an establishment (smoking allowed) where only members can buy a cup of coffee or a plate of eggs. But the owners let me wait there while the Model S drank its juice. Tesla’s experts said that pumping in a little energy would help restore the power lost overnight as a result of the cold weather, and after an hour they cleared me to resume the trip to Milford.
Looking back, I should have bought a membership to Butch’s and spent a few hours there while the car charged. The displayed range never reached the number of miles remaining to Milford, and as I limped along at about 45 miles per hour I saw increasingly dire dashboard warnings to recharge immediately. Mr. Merendino, the product planner, found an E.V. charging station about five miles away.
My questions are:
Let's put politics aside for a bit. Why should _THIS_ particular Ron Paul be allowed to "claim" ronpaul.com over some other person named Ron Paul. That combination of first and last name is not unique (http://howmanyofme.com/people/Ron_Paul/). Why should one person have a stronger claim to a domain name simply because they are more recognized by the public? I could understand the fight for MyBusinessName.com if your business is named MyBusinessName and said name is not some generic word/phrase. But whether it's Ron Paul or Michael Jordan or Joe Schmoe, I just don't see how it would be fair to all the other Ron Paul, Michael Jordan, or Joe Shmoe people.
Google does scan your emails for keywords. That information may be stored or revealed in any number of ways.
What I'd like from MSFT: a guarantee (legal contract) that MSFT will not do the same on the new Outlook.com.
The funny thing is, MSFT seems to be guilty of the same. Check out: http://investigativerep.blogspot.com/2013/02/microsoft-bing-botched-runs-google.html
Let me also add that I do support the memo in any way as there are so many holes in the wording that you could drive a semi-truck through it. It is clear, however, that the intent of the memo is to enable the US to go after citizens who joins with enemy forces and attacks the US. What is very poorly defined, however, is means by which such a person is determined to have "joined enemy forces."
Here the Department of Justice concludes only that where the following three conditions are met, a US operation using lethal force in a foreign country against a US citizen who is a senior operational leader of al-Qa'ida or an associated force would be lawful;
This is not a memo on how to "assassinate" just any US citizen. Rather, it is a memo on how when lethal force can be applied to a "citizen gone bad" if you will -- if one could even call "a senior operational leader of al-Qa'ida or an associated force" a US citizen (see: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1481). What's really sad is that the memo is plastered with the NBC logo all over, making it hard to read. Given this, and the apparently lack of reading comprehension and cherry picking of words, it seems NBC was too eager to up their readership with bold claims of assassinations of US citizens.
Chrome OS is a threat in that it enables users to easily make use of Google's applications. As far as operating systems go, Windows 8 is the biggest threat to MS (in the sense that it is probably causing a lot of users to steer away from MS). But as a platform for using Google's services, MS definitely will have to worry seeing as how many of Google's applications (e.g. Google Docs) eat into Microsoft's profits.
This is a terrible article whose main question is: does the side with larger numbers have a better chance to win?
I have absolutely no idea why they chose to use "does math win?" since there is absolutely no mathematics mentioned at all in the article, unless you equate "larger army" with "math." The answer is: yes, there is a good chance, even if the larger army consists of considerably weaker units.
The more interesting question is: should we continue to devote resources into smarter systems for defending against missile strikes given that it is possible to never completely "catch up" in this cat and mouse game?
The FAQ does not say it requires internet access to actually use the products in their original form (only to upgrade, manage account, save to SkyDrive, etc).
Here is what the FAQ in your link says for the "cloud" version of office (i.e. Office 365):
Internet access is required to install and activate all the latest releases of Office suites and all Office 365 plans.
Internet access is also required to manage, update, and access subscription versions of Office, including Office 365 Home Premium. You need to go online to www.office.com/myaccount to manage your subscription account. For example, if you want to install Office on another PC or device, or to change billing options. You need to connect to the Internet regularly to keep your version of Office up to date and to benefit from automatic upgrades.
Internet connectivity is also required to access the Office 365 additional features such as SkyDrive and Skype world minutes.
You having to put money aside for continual re-traininig is really :) not a problem for cloud service provider. It's a problem for you - deal with it!
That's the point. If the cloud provider updates their end, and I am running a business using their software, I'm stuck having to deal with it (training-wise) as you put it. As a customer of said cloud service, I would be pretty pissed off if suddenly my company was forced into having to upgrade when what my company was using worked just fine.
I hated the new interface that came with 2007 (Fluent User Interface) and 2010 was no improvement. I did not have a choice, though, because that is what they install on our work machines. And I just have to deal with it. With cloud services, when the provider updates the software in a way that disrupts productivity, who is held accountable? When Windows Vista came out, people had the option to not upgrade. But when everything is on the cloud, you don't have the choice to not upgrade anymore. What if you don't care for the changes in the newer version? Or worse that the new features break the existing workflow? Suddenly companies are now going to have to leave aside money for re-training programs in the even that the cloud service providers make drastic changes.
...will always be the user's internet connection -- not just in terms of being connected, but likely also having sufficient bandwidth. I can appreciate the usefulness of "cloud computing" -- which is really just an extension of dumb terminals and network storage packaged in this new buzzphrase. However, it really only makes sense in environments in which they have control over the network availability as well. Even Google Docs, with no price tag, is only as nice as my network connection.
What this does for MS Office is that it now has a new form of DRM -- in the sense that you can only run office if you connect to Microsoft -- and they don' t have to advertise it as being DRM.
Apple requires its suppliers to return the workers back to a school chosen by the family and finance their education. "In addition, the children must continue to receive income matching what they received when they were employed. We also follow up regularly to ensure that the children remain in school and that the suppliers continue to uphold their financial commitment," wrote Apple in its latest report.
Parent highly over-rated. As part of the Slashdot crowd, I actually did not think Reiser was innocent. While there may have been supporters, I find it hard to believe there is any actual hard evidence you could provide to back up your claim that "the Slashdot crowd was screaming for blood about the injustice when he was found guilty... right up to the point where Reiser led the police to his wife's body." As for your "betrayal of trust" claim -- I call bullshit. When you leave your networks completely open to anyone who is not even at all related to the institution, there is no such thing as "trust." It's plain-and-simple "we don't care." If it were the case that only, say, students were allowed to use their networks, then perhaps you "trust" argument might holds some water. Your argument is as silly as when bank leaves all of its deposits out in the open and "trusts" that not only its members but the general public will not steal any of that money. If Aaron had taken that plea bargain, do you think there would be much scrutiny regarding over-reaching prosecutors using their powers for political gain? Or would JSTOR still release 4.5 million articles of research for free? Despite the great tragedy, many are hoping that this tragedy will result in a lot of positive changes (that is the hope, anyway). Your speculation on Hotz is just that -- speculation. Why do you automatically assume that Hotz had no chance of winning? (He had jailbroken other devices before, and it was legal). Who's to say he didn't get paid a large sum for his agreement to never hack Sony products? After all, Sony would have had some pretty bad PR for destroying a kid's future, even if he were guilty (but who's to say) of breaking the law with respect to hacking the PS3. However, I digress with speculation -- much like your own. Let's stick to what little facts that are available. You cannot abuse a system in which there are virtually no laws. MIT's wireless networks were open to anyone and everyone. As for the JSTOR articles -- you don't get to read them for free. Your tax dollars helped pay for the subscription fees that the public libraries and universities have to pay in order to get full access to JSTOR. What is really ironic is that we now have to pay extra (in the form of taxes which go to support these subscriptions) for access to materials we already paid for (in the form of research grants, etc. given by public entities such as the NSF for example).
Longevity was not mentioned in the article, but I did ponder the question of whether what the scientists find may actually lead to "the fountain of youth." Imagine if you could suddenly stop aging once you reach your "preferred" age!
Even with a cloud network that comes equipped with millions of graphics cards, I just don't see how they are going to get around the bandwidth bottleneck. Unless the only games being offered are board games, I just don't see how anything like an FPS being played via cloud computing due to obvious things like: 1. bandwidth needed to download the images to update the gamer's display 2. network latency causing input delays Even with great compression algorithms, you're still looking at a problem of somehow refreshing the display at a minimum of 30 fps. I cannot help but speculate you would need either large bandwidth with low latency or special hardware to uncompress the image stream. But the most important question is, what the hell happens when either the cloud is down, or when you lose your internet connection?
As of 2:00pm EST it seems the links are still available. I even downloaded and installed the programs to see if they actually work, and they do (only tested Acrobat Pro). Anyway, I have uninstalled it seeing as how I only use Adobe's products to read PDF files, and there are newer versions with security updates via their free Reader.
Even if they did manage to get the money out, it all had to go somewhere. Why is it not as simple as looking up where the money went and going from there to determine the culprit? Am I missing something obvious?
While it's great to see this sort of technology, I cannot help but wonder if we will actually ever have LCD contact lens in actual use. The issue I have is that anything displayed on the lens will never be visible to the person wearing the lens as their eyes cannot physically focus on the image. Imagine trying to view a screen that is literally sitting on your eyeball -- how would you possibly focus your eyes to view something that close?!
If Intel does do this, then it would be pretty lucrative for someone to step in and create a "socket-board" with the CPU's pre-installed onto the socket boards. Motherboard makers can continue to do what they have been doing... ABIT did almost just this very thing with their BP6 motherboard and paved the way for enthusiasts to build their own SMP machines
I'm sure everyone is also interested in seeing how the performance compares to drivers on other operating systems (Windows, Mac OS X). Is there a link to such a comparison? It helps to put things into perspective. (I'm too lazy to google it =)
If you are going to be pedantic about this just for the sake of being pedantic then consider this. Anyone could work hard on a serious intellectual problem for more than 4 hours. They could in fact literally spend their entire life (and even be considered crazy/insane) and not get anywhere. However, you seem to have confused working hard for more than 4 hours vs obtaining a useful result/conclusion/solution within 4 hours. What would Dirac say to Andrew Wiles -- a mathematical counter example in every sense of the phrase to your Dirac quote?
Though it sounds insane, they probably left out the some important details. When I was a mathematics graduate student, I too spent a LOT of time thinking about mathematics -- a lot of it was for fun. Did I spend 80 hours a week thinking about mathematics? Probably not, but likely close. However, it was not as though I locked myself up in a room and had someone from the real world slide slices of pizza underneath the door so that I could do mathematics. A lot of theoretical science happens in one's mind, and that can be done anywhere, anytime. On the other hand, you could not do this if your job was to be a surgeon or pilot -- it's not the same. Mind you, all that thinking does get exhausting even if only mentally. However, if you want to ever be a "star" in anything -- sports, medicine, mathematics, etc -- you have to "practice" (i.e. put in extra time). Maybe 80+ hours per week is a bit much, but it is not completely impossible in some areas of study. Of course, you could just go the "average" route and still be "ok" in the end.
The author also stated that you would run it with a dock / keyboard / mouse / monitor
That's his argument for having a tablet over a desktop... to which any sane person would have to ask: why not just get a laptop or netbook, or even an actual desktop. Getting a tablet w/ those accessories defeats the purpose of having a tablet.
From the article:
All the apps that matter to most users (and virtually all businesses) can be run on Windows just fine, thanks (in fact most exclusively run on Windows). So why have an Android tablet and an Android phone, plus a Windows laptop and / or PC. Why not just have the one device to rule them all? At the very least, Windows 8 stands poised to decimate Android tablet sales overnight. As I mentioned in my Microsoft Office article, running genuine productivity software on a tablet is still something of a rarity (emphasis mine), while Microsoft’s Surface Tablet is the first tablet device that’s aiming at exactly this market, first and foremost.
Perhaps the most common business "app" would be Microsoft's office suite. No one is going to be creating powerpoints, word documents, excel sheets, etc. on a tablet or a mobile phone. The tablet is just not designed for that. You need a keyboard and mouse (or the other option is some massive investment into training people to deal with no keyboard/mouse). Windows 8 stands to be the laughing stock of OS's if they do not address usability issues on the desktop. Until then, I only see it being acceptable on a tablet -- or on desktops with fingertouch input displays
The author pretty much defeated his own argument with: running genuine productivity software on a tablet is still something of a rarity -- it will remain for pretty much any application needing quick input from a keyboard/mouse.
If by "force" you mean the philosophy behind using GPL code, then that has been around long before Nvidia even put out binary drivers. The freedom here is not freedom to do whatever the hell you please, but freedom to take the current source and modify however you wish -- provided you contribute back by sharing your modifications. No one is forcing Nvidia to open their drivers -- they can choose to not do so as they have been doing.