You do not have to use the Google Play store. See the Kindle fire and Nook tablet as an example so yes it can recover the costs though game and media sales. Hey you are wrong but at least you didn't post as an AC so you get a brownie point for that.
Understandable but a major pain in the rear. For example I used to use a USB drive that I just kept plugged into the back of my PC as an extra back up. Sure I put it on the network and the network drive was backed up but the USB drive was just one more backup just in case. I also kept a USB drive with me that I used as a back up. In some cases security must trump convenience but what a pain.
Of course some places use USB drives as part of the security. That is how they move data from their networked systems to their air gapped secure systems.
Pretty much. I am thinking that most of the geeks have left slashdot and it is now just a stone to grind political axes without any understanding. What happened to the good old days of people building mech playhouses for their kids in the backyard. Now that was a whole lot of awesome
The cost isn't the problem. The problem with solar vs oil is you can use it in a car, plane, or ship. It doesn't replace oil. The other issue is that it is not on demand. You can only get power from PVs for a few hours a day. For every watt of Solar you also need a watt of peaking power. AKA a gas turbine burning natural gas for cloudy days, dusk, dawn, and night. The trend is nice but not their yet and you have limited areas that it will work in. I doubt that Sweden, Can dada, the UK, and even the costal areas of the Pacific northwest are good candidates. We can go on but my statement stands solar can not replace oil. You are changing your claim now to fossile fuels, which is truer in that solar can supplement them at this time. You will never hear me arguing for a Coal fired plant. Nuclear, natural gas, Solar, and Wind are all much better choices. But you specifically said oil and oil it the one that can not be replaced. The other problem is that we do not need cheap as coal. We need power a lot cheaper than coal. We need power cheaper than hydro. Lets got over your orignal post one issue by issue. You think that we should use the technology used to build nuclear weapons to solve the problems of energy and land. 1. Nuclear weapons are not that high tech. The standard ICBM in the US is the Minuteman which is probably older than you are 1960s. The SLBM used by the US is the Trident II D5 which is very possibly older than you are since it was built in the 1980s. The SSBN that carries the Trident is from the 1970s as well. For cruise missiles we are still using the ALCM from the 1970s and for bombers the B-52 from the 1950s, the B-1b 1970s/80s and the B-2 which is the most modern. You suggested that we could move off planet. The thing is that rocket tech used in ICBMs is way behind that of all current lunchers like the Atlas V, Delta IV, and the Falcon 9. The simple truth is that keep nuclear weapons around is CHEAP. You do not need many and the systems do not need to be upgraded all that often. A rocket that can carry a nuclear weapon from the US to a target on the other side of the planet will do that for a very long time. Sure you may want to update the pen aids now and then but for the most part they just work. They are at the same maturity level frankly as the rifle. So nuclear weapons are cheap. Getting ride of them will not save much money and their is no tech to take from them to solve our current problems. Now conventional weapons are expensive. Here is the rub. Getting ride of nuclear weapons will mean spending even more on conventional weapons. The US would have to have enough weapons that we could totally deter a nuclear armed state. Total cost in resources would be higher than keeping the Nuclear weapons. Next you talk about emigration as a solution to fighting over land. Not going to work. Even when their was almost total free emigration to the "New world" People still found reasons to fight in Europe. Emigration has never solved over crowding even when it was cheap and easy on earth. It still doesn't today. There are towns in the great plans of the US right now that are standing empty. It isn't just about land it is about opportunity. We have land enough house every one now and frankly many more. The problem isn't really land, food, or even water as much as opportunity. You are right that most wars are fought over resources but sometimes those resources are not oil or just land. The Iran Iraq war was over access to a port as well as other reasons. The Falkland island war was over a worthless rock with sheep on it. At the time the Falkland islands where of no value. That was a war of pride. The Civil war in Syria right now is over ideas. The Korean War is another example. Not all wars are over some commodity. You will not stop wars anytime soon and you will not stop them with solar panels and windmills. In other words impractical fantasy. I will give you that it is a wonderful idea but it will not work and is impractical. Where I do agree that pushing for more cheap
"Nuclear weapons are ironic because they are about using space age systems to fight over oil and land. Why not just use advanced materials as found in nuclear missiles to make renewable energy sources (like windmills or solar panels) to replace oil, or why not use rocketry to move into space by building space habitats for more land?"
Well I agree thinking is in order. 1. Solar and Wind have no effect on the consummation of oil in the US. Only 3% of the electricity used is generated by oil. 2. It is so not cost effective to use rockets to transport people and the technology used in ICBMs is solid propellant. Ummm way not practical and well into the land of fantasy. Then you have the issue with water and food. Now using more nuclear power including things like the Thorium molten salt reactor can help there but solar and wind are too expensive. And before you go and say we could use electric cars... Do you own one? The cost and performance of batteries still makes them impractical for large segments of the population. As a second car that you use in a city that has recharging ports it can work but for a large segment of the population they are a no go. Electric aka battery power will not work for planes, ships. long haul trucks, or commercial fishing boats. It can and is used by trains but unfortunately not much in the US. So your suggestions are I am sorry to say impractical fantasy. When you come up with ideas like that you may want to ask "Why are we not doing it" When your answer is because somebody powerful like : government, megacorp, the illuminati, space aliens, and or ghosts is evil and doesn't want it then you are probably not looking hard enough at the problem. There are solutions but they are not easy or simple and will take work. I can tell you right now wind mills and solar while should be part of our energy system are not the solution. Lots of cheap on demand power is at least part of the solution.
Dude this is Slashdot. Frankly I would rather see stories like this then all the political crap that they are pushing these days. I suggest that you take a look back to the good old days. http://web.archive.org/web/19990125103314/http://www.slashdot.org/ And http://web.archive.org/web/19981111190256/http://slashdot.org/ For examples of the roots of Slashdot. Oh and you have got to love this. "Booker writes "So IBM announces a 25 gig hard drive... does the world need this yet? Unless this is in a RAID, would you really want to trust 25 gigs on a single drive? What would you use this for? 400+ hours of MP3s comes to mind... " " As I sit with a 32 gig microSD card in my phone... Have we become jaded to the wonders around us?
Yep and if you are getting into the sprit of things you can add your own Wifi using the SPI interface and then make an PS/2 interface with the GPIO for your old PS/2 mouse and keyboard. Over all that extra $10 for the Ethernet and USB hubs isn't bad but it nice to have the even cheaper option available for those that want it.
You could but then you may need a USB hub as well. If you are going to use it as a small PC you will want wifi and a keyboard which works out to two USBs If you want to use it with XBMC you may need a second USB to add blue tooth, or an IR receiver. or you could always use a smartphone running this http://code.google.com/p/android-xbmcremote/ for a remote. Of course that is for the minimal hackers out there. Now if one wants to really get into the spirit of things you can add and SPI Wifi module like this http://www.cutedigi.com/wireless/wifi/wifi-module-with-spi-interface-to-8-bit-mcu-zg2100mc-wishield.html And then an IR module to the UART on the GPIO http://www.lirc.org/receivers.html for a complete XBMC solution. That would leave the USB port free for a card reader, USB memory stick, or Bluetooth adaptor.
If you decrease the frequency to zero it is a great result. Frankly I am not sure that nuclear weapons as we have them today would increase the severity. Decrease the duration yes but have you seen pictures and seen what the body count of WWI and WWII was? An all out conventional war between the US and Russia and or China or any combination would be absolutely devastating. If they duked it out over Europe and there where no nuclear weapons I am thinking that there would be very little left in an all out take no quarter war like WWII with modern weapons. Imagine what would be left of Warsaw after a 100 B1 or B2 bomber raid? "Yes we do not have that many but without nuclear weapons would would probably have a 1000 and yes I am assuming Russia occupied Warsaw. Or what would be left Munich after 100 Blackjack raid? Maybe even using FAEs? Yea it gets pretty ugly no matter if you use Nuclear weapons or not. Not to mention that without Nukes Chemical and Biologicals might be in wide spread use.
That frankly is irrelevant to the discussion. The very idea of "getting rid off" nuclear weapons is flawed. Put it in Slashdot terms information wants to be free. You can not undo the knowledge of how to make them. I f the major powers get ride of their large arsenals then small arsenals become even more powerful. Let's say that Russia, China, France, the UK, and the US get rid of our weapons. Then having say just five or ten bombs makes you the single most powerful nation on earth or gives you a huge advantage. So do you think that Iran, North Korea, Israel, Syria, India, Pakistan, and or Venezuela will all pass up that chance? I do not think so. So in the end what will the major powers getting rid of nuclear weapons do? It will make it more desirable and IMHO more likely that a whack attack will get and use one not less likely. What I like to point out to people is that out of pocket calculators, color tv, transistor radios, and nuclear weapons that nuclear weapons are the lowest tech.
Ummm.. multi-able membranes then? If this can be constructed then you could have multi-able filters each getting smaller and smaller until you reach the molecular level filter. That should remove not only all the pathogens but also any compounds that are larger than H2O.
In that case it is easy. The solution to this pollution is dilution. I find it so funny how Slashdot seems to be a bastion of anti-tech these days. Many of the issues "Flamable drinking water" actually seem to predate actual fracking. Any contamination of drinking water must be taking place on the down pipe and not the actual fracking zone since natural gas is found below the water table and not above. So the big problem seems to be simple pipe failure which is something that can be fixed. Of course the EPA should regulate the ingredients of the fracking fluid but over all the fear factor on Slashdot is very disappointing. Frankly it almost seems as if coal companies are paying people off for this.
No I doubt that they are. Apple and probably most of it's employees see this as the same thing Microsoft did with Windows. Apple spends a lot of money to innovate and design a new product that really does change a lot about how the world uses tech and then others come and rip off their work. BTW before anyone says that Apple stole from Xerox no they didn't Apple traded stock to Xerox for access to the PARC research on UI. AKA they paid for it. Now this crap with patents I am no fan of but if you look at from their point of view it is probably a simple of case of "We will be dammed if we let that happen again!" Remember that everyone is the hero of their own story. The trick is to understand why.
Not at all. The fact the law is still around shows how dumb it is. The US and Russia are both reducing the number of weapons the US has about half the number from when the law was made. Even better the US has not made any more nuclear weapons for a while. Let me give you an example of this kind of stupid laws. A town had huge problems with hookers and drugs. You could drive down the main street and see them dealing right off the sidewalk. So they outlawed the topless bars. Did nothing but looked good. Same as this stupid law which is at best selectively enforced since I am sure that buy products fuel for their cars and software from microsoft.
Really? Can not buy anything from a company that is related to US nuclear weapons production? Really? What a stupid do nothing make everybody feel good while accomplishing nothing lets all hold hands and sing Kumbaya crap law! I guess they don't use any gasoline since the oil companies sell fuel used to move nuclear weapons. Or any Aluminum since they use Aluminum to build the missiles... Yeah this made such a difference....
Microsoft was on of the first to the party. It is just that they sucked. I wish people would get a grip on this. Windows Phone 7 was not their first version of their phone OS! Microsoft was pushing Windows Mobile for many version before the rebranding and new UI! I am not even a hard core Microsoft hater. Windows 7 didn't suck, Microsoft Flight Simulator rocks, the XBox 360 is a great consol and has made them a pile of money. Windows Phone is a disaster.
1. is correct. 2. Is not. nVidia is spending time and money to write Linux drivers. They actually work pretty well. If they where going to say Fuck Linux then they wouldn't provide drivers.
Let's be honest about what the FOSS community wants. They want nVidia to keep writing the drivers and make them open source. But hey if you still want to stick with the party line of "If you provide the documentation the community will write the drivers for you" then buy AMD/ATI video cards and stop complaining about nVidia. Vote with your wallet. AKA 2. We will do things the way we think is best if you do not like it then go somewhere else.
for the desktop you are correct. The current Linux model is actually extremely friendly to developers. AKA if you make hardware. Lets say I am going to make a router with Linux. I have no problem getting the drivers for the chips I am using since I can decide to pick the chips I want. No problem with feature control with the hardware I want. I can put in a USB port and put a different price tag and sticker on it based on what the USB will support. Yea I will put the sources up on my website but I can require a signed package for updates. And even if so one figures out how to flash it anyway big deal. I will have a new model on the market that breaks that. Updates? As long as I sell it sure but once the new model is out who cares.
BTW You can keep Linux updated if you use Intel everywhere. Sure the Intel video chips suck but they are in the kernel.
BTW this is one reason that Linux does well in servers and the embedded space. They both offer tight control over hardware selection.
Been saying that for years. ATI/AMD did what the community wanted and guess what the community found out? Writing good graphics drivers is really freaking hard. I also agree that an ABI is not badly needed. Even if you are going to produce your own FOSS drivers and an ABI is a big help. The current FOSS solution makes a good enduser experience really hit or miss for a desktop user. 1 Write a driver for your hardware as FOSS. 2 submit it to the Kernel. 3 wait for it to get put into the Kernel. 4 Hope that the big distros adopt that Kernel soon.
Then end user can not tell if the this or that device is supported half the time without knowing what freaking chipset it uses. If you have a binary driver interface then you can stick a driver in the box and say "Supports Linux 4.xx" and it should be just fine
Google + a failure? Voice Search a failure? Google TV? They are all still available and being developed and used. Why not go over a list of Microsofts failures. Windows CE. WebTV. Kin Windows for Tablets. Windows Mobile WIndows Phone Spot. MSN Most of these where really BIG high profile projects unlike the the small projects you have listed from Google plus you have listed projects that are still in use like Plus which is just dumb. Sure microsoft is making profits they are raking it in with OEM deals with Windows and with Office. Then again Nokia and RIM where also making great money not that long ago. How about this reason for going Google over Microsoft. Google tablets already have Apps available for them. Windows RT much like WindowsNT for MIPS and Alpha could end up and un unloved step child to Windows 8 on Intel.
Slashdot Mirror
You do not have to use the Google Play store. See the Kindle fire and Nook tablet as an example so yes it can recover the costs though game and media sales.
Hey you are wrong but at least you didn't post as an AC so you get a brownie point for that.
Understandable but a major pain in the rear. For example I used to use a USB drive that I just kept plugged into the back of my PC as an extra back up. Sure I put it on the network and the network drive was backed up but the USB drive was just one more backup just in case. I also kept a USB drive with me that I used as a back up.
In some cases security must trump convenience but what a pain.
Of course some places use USB drives as part of the security. That is how they move data from their networked systems to their air gapped secure systems.
Pretty much. I am thinking that most of the geeks have left slashdot and it is now just a stone to grind political axes without any understanding. What happened to the good old days of people building mech playhouses for their kids in the backyard.
Now that was a whole lot of awesome
The cost isn't the problem. The problem with solar vs oil is you can use it in a car, plane, or ship.
It doesn't replace oil. The other issue is that it is not on demand. You can only get power from PVs for a few hours a day. For every watt of Solar you also need a watt of peaking power. AKA a gas turbine burning natural gas for cloudy days, dusk, dawn, and night. The trend is nice but not their yet and you have limited areas that it will work in. I doubt that Sweden, Can dada, the UK, and even the costal areas of the Pacific northwest are good candidates.
We can go on but my statement stands solar can not replace oil. You are changing your claim now to fossile fuels, which is truer in that solar can supplement them at this time. You will never hear me arguing for a Coal fired plant. Nuclear, natural gas, Solar, and Wind are all much better choices. But you specifically said oil and oil it the one that can not be replaced.
The other problem is that we do not need cheap as coal. We need power a lot cheaper than coal. We need power cheaper than hydro.
Lets got over your orignal post one issue by issue.
You think that we should use the technology used to build nuclear weapons to solve the problems of energy and land.
1. Nuclear weapons are not that high tech. The standard ICBM in the US is the Minuteman which is probably older than you are 1960s. The SLBM used by the US is the Trident II D5 which is very possibly older than you are since it was built in the 1980s. The SSBN that carries the Trident is from the 1970s as well. For cruise missiles we are still using the ALCM from the 1970s and for bombers the B-52 from the 1950s, the B-1b 1970s/80s and the B-2 which is the most modern. You suggested that we could move off planet. The thing is that rocket tech used in ICBMs is way behind that of all current lunchers like the Atlas V, Delta IV, and the Falcon 9. The simple truth is that keep nuclear weapons around is CHEAP. You do not need many and the systems do not need to be upgraded all that often. A rocket that can carry a nuclear weapon from the US to a target on the other side of the planet will do that for a very long time. Sure you may want to update the pen aids now and then but for the most part they just work. They are at the same maturity level frankly as the rifle.
So nuclear weapons are cheap. Getting ride of them will not save much money and their is no tech to take from them to solve our current problems.
Now conventional weapons are expensive. Here is the rub. Getting ride of nuclear weapons will mean spending even more on conventional weapons. The US would have to have enough weapons that we could totally deter a nuclear armed state. Total cost in resources would be higher than keeping the Nuclear weapons.
Next you talk about emigration as a solution to fighting over land. Not going to work. Even when their was almost total free emigration to the "New world" People still found reasons to fight in Europe. Emigration has never solved over crowding even when it was cheap and easy on earth. It still doesn't today. There are towns in the great plans of the US right now that are standing empty.
It isn't just about land it is about opportunity. We have land enough house every one now and frankly many more. The problem isn't really land, food, or even water as much as opportunity.
You are right that most wars are fought over resources but sometimes those resources are not oil or just land. The Iran Iraq war was over access to a port as well as other reasons. The Falkland island war was over a worthless rock with sheep on it. At the time the Falkland islands where of no value. That was a war of pride. The Civil war in Syria right now is over ideas. The Korean War is another example.
Not all wars are over some commodity. You will not stop wars anytime soon and you will not stop them with solar panels and windmills.
In other words impractical fantasy. I will give you that it is a wonderful idea but it will not work and is impractical. Where I do agree that pushing for more cheap
"Nuclear weapons are ironic because they are about using space age systems to fight over oil and land. Why not just use advanced materials as found in nuclear missiles to make renewable energy sources (like windmills or solar panels) to replace oil, or why not use rocketry to move into space by building space habitats for more land?"
Well I agree thinking is in order.
1. Solar and Wind have no effect on the consummation of oil in the US. Only 3% of the electricity used is generated by oil.
2. It is so not cost effective to use rockets to transport people and the technology used in ICBMs is solid propellant.
Ummm way not practical and well into the land of fantasy.
Then you have the issue with water and food. Now using more nuclear power including things like the Thorium molten salt reactor can help there but solar and wind are too expensive.
And before you go and say we could use electric cars... Do you own one? The cost and performance of batteries still makes them impractical for large segments of the population. As a second car that you use in a city that has recharging ports it can work but for a large segment of the population they are a no go. Electric aka battery power will not work for planes, ships. long haul trucks, or commercial fishing boats. It can and is used by trains but unfortunately not much in the US.
So your suggestions are I am sorry to say impractical fantasy. When you come up with ideas like that you may want to ask "Why are we not doing it" When your answer is because somebody powerful like : government, megacorp, the illuminati, space aliens, and or ghosts is evil and doesn't want it then you are probably not looking hard enough at the problem. There are solutions but they are not easy or simple and will take work. I can tell you right now wind mills and solar while should be part of our energy system are not the solution. Lots of cheap on demand power is at least part of the solution.
Dude this is Slashdot. Frankly I would rather see stories like this then all the political crap that they are pushing these days. I suggest that you take a look back to the good old days.
http://web.archive.org/web/19990125103314/http://www.slashdot.org/
And http://web.archive.org/web/19981111190256/http://slashdot.org/
For examples of the roots of Slashdot. Oh and you have got to love this.
"Booker writes "So IBM announces a 25 gig hard drive... does the world need this yet? Unless this is in a RAID, would you really want to trust 25 gigs on a single drive? What would you use this for? 400+ hours of MP3s comes to mind... " "
As I sit with a 32 gig microSD card in my phone... Have we become jaded to the wonders around us?
Yep and if you are getting into the sprit of things you can add your own Wifi using the SPI interface and then make an PS/2 interface with the GPIO for your old PS/2 mouse and keyboard.
Over all that extra $10 for the Ethernet and USB hubs isn't bad but it nice to have the even cheaper option available for those that want it.
You could but then you may need a USB hub as well.
If you are going to use it as a small PC you will want wifi and a keyboard which works out to two USBs
If you want to use it with XBMC you may need a second USB to add blue tooth, or an IR receiver.
or you could always use a smartphone running this http://code.google.com/p/android-xbmcremote/ for a remote.
Of course that is for the minimal hackers out there.
Now if one wants to really get into the spirit of things you can add and SPI Wifi module like this http://www.cutedigi.com/wireless/wifi/wifi-module-with-spi-interface-to-8-bit-mcu-zg2100mc-wishield.html
And then an IR module to the UART on the GPIO http://www.lirc.org/receivers.html for a complete XBMC solution.
That would leave the USB port free for a card reader, USB memory stick, or Bluetooth adaptor.
If you decrease the frequency to zero it is a great result. Frankly I am not sure that nuclear weapons as we have them today would increase the severity. Decrease the duration yes but have you seen pictures and seen what the body count of WWI and WWII was? An all out conventional war between the US and Russia and or China or any combination would be absolutely devastating. If they duked it out over Europe and there where no nuclear weapons I am thinking that there would be very little left in an all out take no quarter war like WWII with modern weapons. Imagine what would be left of Warsaw after a 100 B1 or B2 bomber raid? "Yes we do not have that many but without nuclear weapons would would probably have a 1000 and yes I am assuming Russia occupied Warsaw.
Or what would be left Munich after 100 Blackjack raid? Maybe even using FAEs?
Yea it gets pretty ugly no matter if you use Nuclear weapons or not. Not to mention that without Nukes Chemical and Biologicals might be in wide spread use.
That frankly is irrelevant to the discussion. The very idea of "getting rid off" nuclear weapons is flawed.
Put it in Slashdot terms information wants to be free. You can not undo the knowledge of how to make them. I f the major powers get ride of their large arsenals then small arsenals become even more powerful.
Let's say that Russia, China, France, the UK, and the US get rid of our weapons. Then having say just five or ten bombs makes you the single most powerful nation on earth or gives you a huge advantage. So do you think that Iran, North Korea, Israel, Syria, India, Pakistan, and or Venezuela will all pass up that chance? I do not think so. So in the end what will the major powers getting rid of nuclear weapons do? It will make it more desirable and IMHO more likely that a whack attack will get and use one not less likely.
What I like to point out to people is that out of pocket calculators, color tv, transistor radios, and nuclear weapons that nuclear weapons are the lowest tech.
Until they kill us.
Ummm.. multi-able membranes then?
If this can be constructed then you could have multi-able filters each getting smaller and smaller until you reach the molecular level filter. That should remove not only all the pathogens but also any compounds that are larger than H2O.
In that case it is easy. The solution to this pollution is dilution.
I find it so funny how Slashdot seems to be a bastion of anti-tech these days. Many of the issues "Flamable drinking water" actually seem to predate actual fracking. Any contamination of drinking water must be taking place on the down pipe and not the actual fracking zone since natural gas is found below the water table and not above. So the big problem seems to be simple pipe failure which is something that can be fixed. Of course the EPA should regulate the ingredients of the fracking fluid but over all the fear factor on Slashdot is very disappointing. Frankly it almost seems as if coal companies are paying people off for this.
No I doubt that they are.
Apple and probably most of it's employees see this as the same thing Microsoft did with Windows. Apple spends a lot of money to innovate and design a new product that really does change a lot about how the world uses tech and then others come and rip off their work.
BTW before anyone says that Apple stole from Xerox no they didn't Apple traded stock to Xerox for access to the PARC research on UI. AKA they paid for it.
Now this crap with patents I am no fan of but if you look at from their point of view it is probably a simple of case of "We will be dammed if we let that happen again!"
Remember that everyone is the hero of their own story. The trick is to understand why.
Not to mention that Intels GPU are just not as good or I bet as complex as AMDs at this time.
Not at all. The fact the law is still around shows how dumb it is. The US and Russia are both reducing the number of weapons the US has about half the number from when the law was made.
Even better the US has not made any more nuclear weapons for a while.
Let me give you an example of this kind of stupid laws.
A town had huge problems with hookers and drugs. You could drive down the main street and see them dealing right off the sidewalk. So they outlawed the topless bars.
Did nothing but looked good. Same as this stupid law which is at best selectively enforced since I am sure that buy products fuel for their cars and software from microsoft.
AMD has release the specs of their chips and has even helped with the development of drivers. It is unfair to call their support half baked.
Really? Can not buy anything from a company that is related to US nuclear weapons production? Really? What a stupid do nothing make everybody feel good while accomplishing nothing lets all hold hands and sing Kumbaya crap law!
I guess they don't use any gasoline since the oil companies sell fuel used to move nuclear weapons. Or any Aluminum since they use Aluminum to build the missiles...
Yeah this made such a difference....
Microsoft was on of the first to the party. It is just that they sucked. I wish people would get a grip on this. Windows Phone 7 was not their first version of their phone OS! Microsoft was pushing Windows Mobile for many version before the rebranding and new UI! I am not even a hard core Microsoft hater. Windows 7 didn't suck, Microsoft Flight Simulator rocks, the XBox 360 is a great consol and has made them a pile of money. Windows Phone is a disaster.
1. is correct.
2. Is not. nVidia is spending time and money to write Linux drivers. They actually work pretty well. If they where going to say Fuck Linux then they wouldn't provide drivers.
Let's be honest about what the FOSS community wants. They want nVidia to keep writing the drivers and make them open source. But hey if you still want to stick with the party line of "If you provide the documentation the community will write the drivers for you" then buy AMD/ATI video cards and stop complaining about nVidia. Vote with your wallet.
AKA
2. We will do things the way we think is best if you do not like it then go somewhere else.
for the desktop you are correct.
The current Linux model is actually extremely friendly to developers. AKA if you make hardware. Lets say I am going to make a router with Linux.
I have no problem getting the drivers for the chips I am using since I can decide to pick the chips I want.
No problem with feature control with the hardware I want. I can put in a USB port and put a different price tag and sticker on it based on what the USB will support.
Yea I will put the sources up on my website but I can require a signed package for updates. And even if so one figures out how to flash it anyway big deal. I will have a new model on the market that breaks that.
Updates? As long as I sell it sure but once the new model is out who cares.
BTW You can keep Linux updated if you use Intel everywhere. Sure the Intel video chips suck but they are in the kernel.
BTW this is one reason that Linux does well in servers and the embedded space. They both offer tight control over hardware selection.
Been saying that for years. ATI/AMD did what the community wanted and guess what the community found out? Writing good graphics drivers is really freaking hard.
I also agree that an ABI is not badly needed. Even if you are going to produce your own FOSS drivers and an ABI is a big help.
The current FOSS solution makes a good enduser experience really hit or miss for a desktop user.
1 Write a driver for your hardware as FOSS.
2 submit it to the Kernel.
3 wait for it to get put into the Kernel.
4 Hope that the big distros adopt that Kernel soon.
Then end user can not tell if the this or that device is supported half the time without knowing what freaking chipset it uses.
If you have a binary driver interface then you can stick a driver in the box and say "Supports Linux 4.xx" and it should be just fine
You do realize that nothing is so crazy that no one on that internet will believe it.
Google + a failure? Voice Search a failure? Google TV? They are all still available and being developed and used.
Why not go over a list of Microsofts failures.
Windows CE.
WebTV.
Kin
Windows for Tablets.
Windows Mobile
WIndows Phone
Spot.
MSN
Most of these where really BIG high profile projects unlike the the small projects you have listed from Google plus you have listed projects that are still in use like Plus which is just dumb.
Sure microsoft is making profits they are raking it in with OEM deals with Windows and with Office. Then again Nokia and RIM where also making great money not that long ago.
How about this reason for going Google over Microsoft. Google tablets already have Apps available for them. Windows RT much like WindowsNT for MIPS and Alpha could end up and un unloved step child to Windows 8 on Intel.
Head hurts... Only 2GB or 4GB depending on OS is not a large amount of ram....