I buy a bottle of juice and drink all of its contents. Do I have a right to resell it? Sure. The fact that it's been used up and no one would want to buy it is not a violation of law. Cue golden-shower jokes.
Your analogy would work if you ate the DVD, but since you are not consuming the data on the disk, it fails. Here is a more accurate analogy, although still flawed. You buy a newspaper at the local newsstand, but only you are allowed to read it. Even though you have taken it home, your spouse has to go purchase their own copy. The content is still there, it is just not allowed to be accessed.
Also IANAL, so this is purely conjecture, but I don't think it would be deemed illegal in the US. We already have DRM on ebooks / music which prevent us from effectively reselling those products and that hasn't been deemed illegal yet. In fact, the DMCA instead makes it illegal to remove that copy protection for personal use, let also for reselling purposes.
That said, the patent wouldn't disallow reselling the disc. It would just make the resold disc ineffective.
The difference is that e books are transmitted electronically. This is a protection on a piece of tangible property. There are both common law and case law supporting what one may do with personal property that they have purchased, regardless of any patents involved. For instance, if my yard has moles, and I buy a mole trap (which is patented, btw) to get rid of the moles, I am perfectly within my legal right to sell said mole trap to somebody else. Stoney's patent may infringe on my right to sell my personal tangible property by effectively making it non-functional. Even if I don't want to sell it, but must replace my console because of hardware failure, I am unable to use my personal tangible property with the new console, even though I am the original owner of the legally purchased property. The question is does Sony have the right to usurp property rights in these cases, patent or not?
I certainly ANAL, but I can see plenty of weasels round it. You are buying the DVD, but only licensing the software. You have all your consumer rights over the DVD, but just because you can physically transfer the thing you bought, it doesn't mean it has to execute in another machine. The data, as oppose to the physical media, is licensed rather than sold, so you do not have the same rights.
That has already been tried in numerous jurisdictions and failed. It is also why you pay sales tax on the full retail price of the DVD and not the $1.00 portion attributable to the plastic media. Sony can't have it both ways. Nor do they want that, because, that would mean that if you buy the DVD and licensing the software, you have additional contractual rights besides those from a sale, one of which would be that unless they specify otherwise, they have to maintain it until the license expires. That's not a good business model for most software companies selling consumer products as the terms are indefinite.
There is very little point in Google closing Android
Yeah, tell that to Acer. Google didn't close Android, but does fight back if anybody tries to fork it or access Google Play without using bona-Fidel Android. So technically, Android can be forked, it just can't then use anything made for Android. A forked Android with no apps really isn't very useful. Google knows this, so effectively, Android already is closed in a practical way, regardless of its license.
All of a sudden a new market opens for Ubuntu Mobile;-)
Seriously, does that impact anyone? The thing is available for free anyway...
Just because it is free today does not mean it will be tomorrow. The fact that Google changed the SDK from being free as in beer to non-free is indicative that they could just as easily change it from also being not free as in paying a fee. Think of it like Walmart moving into a new market -- they heavily undersell the competition until there is little competition left. Then the selection goes down and the prices go up. What is to stop Google from doing the same thing and if they did, where would people go?
IANAL, but I wonder if such a patent, assuming valid, would be legal to use in the US and other jurisdicitons. There is a lot of case law describing consumer sales and what one is allowed to do with what one purchases, including resale of said goods. While Sony might have a legal patent, it might not be legal to impliment it.
As I said, IANAL, but maybe somebody who is could chime in.
Some (most) people don't read this kind of news and don't know what they're getting into when they buy a console. If anything, it legitimize piracy because piracy becomes the only way to play your games. After the thing is cracked, who cares what DRM was there originally?
It doesn't legitimize piracy. However, it does help explain why piracy exists.
Assuming the CD key is with the materials where is the problem with it?
I have several PC games I got that way and they work fine. I guess if you have to register with steam or something that might break it.
Because Sony's patent isn't about the user having to enter a key, but the console somehow modifying the disk so that the disk and console are linked and the game will only play on that specific console. Basically, once the game has been installed, it can never be installed on another console again, thereby killing off the second hand game market.
Assuming the patent is valid, it will be interesting to see what the courts have to say about the legality of using it.
How can I explain to a coworker that he writes bad code?
It depends. Are you his/her supervisor? Did the coworker ask for your opinion or advice? If you cannot answer "Yes" to at least one of those questions, then you really should examine your own motivation as to why you feel you must explain to the coworker anything at all. Now, on the other hand, if the coworker's coding is impacting your work, then your recourse is to discuss it with your supervisor. Taking the matter into your own hands, particularly without approval from your supervisor will most likely get you branded as a trouble maker and have negative repercussions for you, while doing nothing to improve the coworker's code.
Programmers with poor programming skills usually get additional training. Programmers labelled as having a poor attitude usually get replaced.
Maybe Acer will put Ubuntu on all of those android-like phones they were producing for China that Google squashed the sale of. They're already produced and needing a new OS.
The article is very misleading. While it is true that the budget cuts will hinder the satelites which will mean the predictions of storm tracks will not be as accurate, it does not mean there will not be storm tracks. In real terms, what it means is that the models will show a wider path a hurrican may take meaning more people may need to prepare, but not that the Eastern Seaboard will be caught by suprise.
In the case of Hurrican Sandy, it would have made no difference. New Jersey and New York would have been included in the general hurrican watch even without the satelite prediction, just as they were before the models predicted that Sandy would turn inward. If those states took precautions, as they normally would, they would still have had ample notice once Sandy turned inward.
The real question to be asking is why didn't NOAA plan for this? The Bush era tax cuts were already planned to expire. They were extended by the previous congress with the so called fiscal cliff added to ensure action was taken. Surely NOAA would have contigency plans for the fiscal cliff. It's not as if the possibily was remote, particularly given congress' performance with it's debt/bond rating.
If these satelites are as critical as the article is making them out to be, then NOAA should have no problem getting congress to allow them to cut other non-critical NOAA activities and re-direct the funds. Of course, they probably don't want to do that, and instead prefer to capitalize on the fears and anxieties of the public while Sandy is fresh in their minds.
Personally, I'd make congress lay off all of their staff and cut all of their expense accounts until they can pass a balanced budget. As long as they are exempt from the pressures of the fiscal cliff and they ignore their own entitlements, nothing will change. At least the country does benefit from NOAA.
"Maybe a simple solution is to not tax corporations income at all and to pass the taxable income to the owners of the corporations"
Except corporations are legal citizens and should pay taxes given that legal status, just like the rest of us. Otherwise, strip them of their legal and other supports and treat them like simple businesses again with all the risk and direct accountability that goes with it.
Corporations are not legal citizens. They are legal entities, there is a difference. Of course, these corporations are registered/incorporated in other countries, so that would make them foreign citizens. To take your approach a step further, then, they couldn't work/operate in the US without the appropriate visa, like any other foreigh citizen. Since they would be a special class of foreign citizen, the government could price that visa at a different rate, possibly to offset the loss tax revenues for seeking these tax havens or, just treat them like any other foreign national and any income earned in the US is taxable for the US, regardless of your country of origin. Of course, you could only net expenses incurred in the US to generate those revenues.
That is somewhat more complicated, but if you want to go with the model that a corporation is a citizen, then treat them like any other citizen for tax purposes. However, I still think it would be much simpler to pass the net income of the corporation to the owners (shareholders) and tax it there.
The original purpose of incorporating a business was to limit the liability of the owners/shareholders, not to shelter taxes.
Maybe a simple solution is to not tax corporations income at all and to pass the taxable income to the owners of the corporations like a partnership. If you own 10% of the company, then you must claim 10% of the net income on your personal taxes. If you own.0001%, then you claim.0001%. In this modern age of computers, corporations can issue 1099 statements with your weighted average share of income.
Doing so treats corporate income like any other business income for tax purposes and dividends just become a return on capital investment. The downside to all of this is that some very wealthy people won't be able to shelter their money in off shore corporations any more because they will have to claim it as personal income just like a sole proprietor or partner.
If we sent some Earth-based microbes that need help incubating on Mars, then definitely. On the other hand if we specifically designed a fast-multiplying terraforming cocktail that could thrive in Martian conditions (probably well beyond our abilities for at least the next few decades) then the transformation could be almost overnight thanks to exponential growth. A single bacteria given unlimited food and a danger-free environment could grow to a colony out-massing the Earth in under a week. Sounds implausible I know, but at 1 division per hour you get 2^(24*7) = 4*10^50 individuals in a week. Multiply by an average bacteria mass of ~1x10^-12g and you get 4x10^35kg, over 60 billion times the mass of Earth.
And once you cover Mars with a living skin pumping oxygen and water into the atmosphere the transformation could be quite rapid.
Okay, I'll bite. Question 1 - Why would we do such a thing in the first place? Question 2 - exactly where is this man made bacteria going to get the nutrients on Mars, particulalry in quantity enough that it would be able to pump out oxygen and water? Or are we going to have to transport the oxygen and hydrogen to Mars to make that work and if so, why don't we just pump out the water (of course it doesn't solve the question of where are we going to get enough oxygen and hydrogen to supply an entire second planet without depleting this one).
Science fiction is nice, but unless you are talking about engineering a bacteria that can somehow transform atoms of one element, say silicon, into atoms of another, you don't have the raw materials on Mars, at least in sufficient quantity to produce the effect you are wanting.
There is as much life in the earths crust as there is on the surface. It is therefore quite possible that there is a lot of life in the crust of Mars.
How does that logic work, exactly? Assuming that the Earth and Mars are similar enough to compare and that life on the surface is A and in the crust is B. You are saying that on Earth A = B but on Mars that A B, or specifically, since on Mars, to date, A=0, that 0=1. Again, how do you get to that point?
Likewise. I'd assumed that the move towards Unity was aimed at the 'future' ie tablets etc, and that the desktop was yesterday and was to be sidelined. Ubuntu seem to be totally lost at sea now, with what I see as a troubled tablet UI (Unity) and a rejected and stagnant desktop UI.
From day one, Canonical said Unity was not about tablets, but was to take advantage of computers being almost always connected to the internet and having screens wider than they are tall. Many in the Windows world have been moving the menu bar to the side of the screen for the latter reason. Many in the Linux world, running something other than Gnome 2 were doing so, likewise.
Being a tablet OS takes a lot more than just having a launcher with big buttons. You need to have an interface designed around touch and Unity was never designed for that. The KDE folks are designing KDE Active specifically for that and that is an approach that Ubuntu and even Gnome should have followed: have your core environment with a modular UI that can be made to fit the form factor and use scenario needed. Run KDE on the desktop, you get KDE plus plasma desktop. Run KDE on a netbook or small screen laptop, you get KDE plus plasma netbook. Run KDE on a tablet, you get KDE plus plasma active. One set of core technologies (KDE) but tailored to the interface needed, instead of a one size fits all (or one size fits nobody).
KDE seems poised to be able to handle desktop/laptop/tablet. I don't know how robust Gnome 3 extensions are and whether they will enable adaptations suitable for a tablet. Unity, however, never was designed for a tablet and seems a dead end in its current form. My recommendation for Canonical, would be to modify KDE to provide a Unity like experience (many have already done this, but it isn't as fully integrated as Unity is) and then build on KDE active for their tablet experience. Of course, that will be more difficult since they killed off Kubuntu, their KDE spin (luckily, Blue Systems picked them up and is supporting them, much more than Canonical ever did).
Microsoft once had the slogan "Where do you want to go?" Canonical should be asking themselves the same thing.
Yes, hope we'll see Ballmer as a MS leader for many more years. He'll drive the company into the ground.
Be careful what you wish for. The scenario you ask for would also most likely have Apple as the dominant player and I don't think Apple would be prone to make Microsoft's mistakes.
The bad thing is, Ubuntu was something of great value just four years ago. At the time, it was the only version of Linux that you could show someone out of the box and get them excited about using a new operating system. Part of the allure was beryl/compiz, but most of what made it special in the Linux world was that it played nicer with the mandatory binary blobs (like wireless firmware and graphics drivers). It was an acceptable compromise between the GNU way and everyone else.
And a lot of us geeks spread the gospel of Ubuntu to the unwashed masses. Now it's turned out that Ubuntu was a false prophet, so we're having to do a lot of damage control (and further explanations of why Ubuntu's off the deep end).
So, if Ubuntu had stayed with Gnome Shell, they wouldn't be a false prophet? I don't care for Unity, myself, but I don't see where Ubuntu defaulting to it negates the other pluses you mention.
Has the definition of cloud changed so much that it can even be done now, with a single server?
From the very beginning the cloud has always been the connection medium between point a and b it has nothing to do with what is on the end points. Think back to those plastic templates we used to draw network diagrams with. Once we went out onto a public network the shape was a cloud. Marketers, in recent years, jumped on that because referring to the internet and the web sounded so blah and they needed something new and exciting. Thus, we now have the cloud. New name, for the same thing.
As for whether you can host your data or not on a single server or you need multiple servers isn't really up to the cloud, it depends on your data. Whether you want to host it on a public server or your own (as in owncloud), is entirely up to you, too. The cloud doesn't care, because the cloud is just a bunch of packets streaming around the internet.
Obviously, you have never done multi-color bulk mailing. It cost more than $1 per person by the time you include paper, printing postage. Plus don't forget folding and stapling or folding and stuffing depending on if it is going in an envelope or not. And of course, it has to be pre-sorted by zip code, which usually is done by a mailing house (additional cost) and means a database needs to be maintained for addresses (another cost).
The only discount in bulk mailing over regular mailing is the actual postage cost is less, but the production costs are all the same and it adds up to more than $1 except for the smallest of mailings.
The suggestion was to charge a tenth of a penny per email. For regular folks who email, that works up to less than a penny per day. (No fees for business emails from private or hosted exchange servers, of course.) This would discourage spam emails and mass marketings from public accounts (although it wouldn't stop spam from zombie email accounts on private domains.)
A dollar per message should be enough to discourage irresponsible spamming.
A dollar per message is a lot cheaper than paying for printing and postage on bulk mail junk mail, even with the discounted bulk postage rate.
I realise they make money through ads but I suspect that won't last so they're seemingly looking for anyway to milk people. Sure it'll stop bulk spam but $1 is nothing to get your chance to be a total creep to some strange woman. On the bright side if creeping goes on that should kill FB.
$1 is pretty cheap considering how much bulk mailers pay for printing and postage to send you stuff via snail mail.
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I buy a bottle of juice and drink all of its contents. Do I have a right to resell it? Sure. The fact that it's been used up and no one would want to buy it is not a violation of law. Cue golden-shower jokes.
Your analogy would work if you ate the DVD, but since you are not consuming the data on the disk, it fails. Here is a more accurate analogy, although still flawed. You buy a newspaper at the local newsstand, but only you are allowed to read it. Even though you have taken it home, your spouse has to go purchase their own copy. The content is still there, it is just not allowed to be accessed.
Also IANAL, so this is purely conjecture, but I don't think it would be deemed illegal in the US. We already have DRM on ebooks / music which prevent us from effectively reselling those products and that hasn't been deemed illegal yet. In fact, the DMCA instead makes it illegal to remove that copy protection for personal use, let also for reselling purposes.
That said, the patent wouldn't disallow reselling the disc. It would just make the resold disc ineffective.
The difference is that e books are transmitted electronically. This is a protection on a piece of tangible property. There are both common law and case law supporting what one may do with personal property that they have purchased, regardless of any patents involved. For instance, if my yard has moles, and I buy a mole trap (which is patented, btw) to get rid of the moles, I am perfectly within my legal right to sell said mole trap to somebody else. Stoney's patent may infringe on my right to sell my personal tangible property by effectively making it non-functional. Even if I don't want to sell it, but must replace my console because of hardware failure, I am unable to use my personal tangible property with the new console, even though I am the original owner of the legally purchased property. The question is does Sony have the right to usurp property rights in these cases, patent or not?
I certainly ANAL, but I can see plenty of weasels round it. You are buying the DVD, but only licensing the software. You have all your consumer rights over the DVD, but just because you can physically transfer the thing you bought, it doesn't mean it has to execute in another machine. The data, as oppose to the physical media, is licensed rather than sold, so you do not have the same rights.
That has already been tried in numerous jurisdictions and failed. It is also why you pay sales tax on the full retail price of the DVD and not the $1.00 portion attributable to the plastic media. Sony can't have it both ways. Nor do they want that, because, that would mean that if you buy the DVD and licensing the software, you have additional contractual rights besides those from a sale, one of which would be that unless they specify otherwise, they have to maintain it until the license expires. That's not a good business model for most software companies selling consumer products as the terms are indefinite.
There is very little point in Google closing Android
Yeah, tell that to Acer. Google didn't close Android, but does fight back if anybody tries to fork it or access Google Play without using bona-Fidel Android. So technically, Android can be forked, it just can't then use anything made for Android. A forked Android with no apps really isn't very useful. Google knows this, so effectively, Android already is closed in a practical way, regardless of its license.
All of a sudden a new market opens for Ubuntu Mobile ;-)
Seriously, does that impact anyone? The thing is available for free anyway...
Just because it is free today does not mean it will be tomorrow. The fact that Google changed the SDK from being free as in beer to non-free is indicative that they could just as easily change it from also being not free as in paying a fee. Think of it like Walmart moving into a new market -- they heavily undersell the competition until there is little competition left. Then the selection goes down and the prices go up. What is to stop Google from doing the same thing and if they did, where would people go?
IANAL, but I wonder if such a patent, assuming valid, would be legal to use in the US and other jurisdicitons. There is a lot of case law describing consumer sales and what one is allowed to do with what one purchases, including resale of said goods. While Sony might have a legal patent, it might not be legal to impliment it.
As I said, IANAL, but maybe somebody who is could chime in.
Some (most) people don't read this kind of news and don't know what they're getting into when they buy a console. If anything, it legitimize piracy because piracy becomes the only way to play your games. After the thing is cracked, who cares what DRM was there originally?
It doesn't legitimize piracy. However, it does help explain why piracy exists.
Huh?
Assuming the CD key is with the materials where is the problem with it?
I have several PC games I got that way and they work fine. I guess if you have to register with steam or something that might break it.
Because Sony's patent isn't about the user having to enter a key, but the console somehow modifying the disk so that the disk and console are linked and the game will only play on that specific console. Basically, once the game has been installed, it can never be installed on another console again, thereby killing off the second hand game market.
Assuming the patent is valid, it will be interesting to see what the courts have to say about the legality of using it.
How can I explain to a coworker that he writes bad code?
It depends. Are you his/her supervisor? Did the coworker ask for your opinion or advice? If you cannot answer "Yes" to at least one of those questions, then you really should examine your own motivation as to why you feel you must explain to the coworker anything at all. Now, on the other hand, if the coworker's coding is impacting your work, then your recourse is to discuss it with your supervisor. Taking the matter into your own hands, particularly without approval from your supervisor will most likely get you branded as a trouble maker and have negative repercussions for you, while doing nothing to improve the coworker's code.
Programmers with poor programming skills usually get additional training. Programmers labelled as having a poor attitude usually get replaced.
Maybe Acer will put Ubuntu on all of those android-like phones they were producing for China that Google squashed the sale of. They're already produced and needing a new OS.
The article is very misleading. While it is true that the budget cuts will hinder the satelites which will mean the predictions of storm tracks will not be as accurate, it does not mean there will not be storm tracks. In real terms, what it means is that the models will show a wider path a hurrican may take meaning more people may need to prepare, but not that the Eastern Seaboard will be caught by suprise.
In the case of Hurrican Sandy, it would have made no difference. New Jersey and New York would have been included in the general hurrican watch even without the satelite prediction, just as they were before the models predicted that Sandy would turn inward. If those states took precautions, as they normally would, they would still have had ample notice once Sandy turned inward.
The real question to be asking is why didn't NOAA plan for this? The Bush era tax cuts were already planned to expire. They were extended by the previous congress with the so called fiscal cliff added to ensure action was taken. Surely NOAA would have contigency plans for the fiscal cliff. It's not as if the possibily was remote, particularly given congress' performance with it's debt/bond rating.
If these satelites are as critical as the article is making them out to be, then NOAA should have no problem getting congress to allow them to cut other non-critical NOAA activities and re-direct the funds. Of course, they probably don't want to do that, and instead prefer to capitalize on the fears and anxieties of the public while Sandy is fresh in their minds.
Personally, I'd make congress lay off all of their staff and cut all of their expense accounts until they can pass a balanced budget. As long as they are exempt from the pressures of the fiscal cliff and they ignore their own entitlements, nothing will change. At least the country does benefit from NOAA.
"Maybe a simple solution is to not tax corporations income at all and to pass the taxable income to the owners of the corporations"
Except corporations are legal citizens and should pay taxes given that legal status, just like the rest of us. Otherwise, strip them of their legal and other supports and treat them like simple businesses again with all the risk and direct accountability that goes with it.
Corporations are not legal citizens. They are legal entities, there is a difference. Of course, these corporations are registered/incorporated in other countries, so that would make them foreign citizens. To take your approach a step further, then, they couldn't work/operate in the US without the appropriate visa, like any other foreigh citizen. Since they would be a special class of foreign citizen, the government could price that visa at a different rate, possibly to offset the loss tax revenues for seeking these tax havens or, just treat them like any other foreign national and any income earned in the US is taxable for the US, regardless of your country of origin. Of course, you could only net expenses incurred in the US to generate those revenues.
That is somewhat more complicated, but if you want to go with the model that a corporation is a citizen, then treat them like any other citizen for tax purposes. However, I still think it would be much simpler to pass the net income of the corporation to the owners (shareholders) and tax it there.
The original purpose of incorporating a business was to limit the liability of the owners/shareholders, not to shelter taxes.
Maybe a simple solution is to not tax corporations income at all and to pass the taxable income to the owners of the corporations like a partnership. If you own 10% of the company, then you must claim 10% of the net income on your personal taxes. If you own .0001%, then you claim .0001%. In this modern age of computers, corporations can issue 1099 statements with your weighted average share of income.
Doing so treats corporate income like any other business income for tax purposes and dividends just become a return on capital investment. The downside to all of this is that some very wealthy people won't be able to shelter their money in off shore corporations any more because they will have to claim it as personal income just like a sole proprietor or partner.
If we sent some Earth-based microbes that need help incubating on Mars, then definitely. On the other hand if we specifically designed a fast-multiplying terraforming cocktail that could thrive in Martian conditions (probably well beyond our abilities for at least the next few decades) then the transformation could be almost overnight thanks to exponential growth. A single bacteria given unlimited food and a danger-free environment could grow to a colony out-massing the Earth in under a week. Sounds implausible I know, but at 1 division per hour you get 2^(24*7) = 4*10^50 individuals in a week. Multiply by an average bacteria mass of ~1x10^-12g and you get 4x10^35kg, over 60 billion times the mass of Earth.
And once you cover Mars with a living skin pumping oxygen and water into the atmosphere the transformation could be quite rapid.
Okay, I'll bite. Question 1 - Why would we do such a thing in the first place? Question 2 - exactly where is this man made bacteria going to get the nutrients on Mars, particulalry in quantity enough that it would be able to pump out oxygen and water? Or are we going to have to transport the oxygen and hydrogen to Mars to make that work and if so, why don't we just pump out the water (of course it doesn't solve the question of where are we going to get enough oxygen and hydrogen to supply an entire second planet without depleting this one).
Science fiction is nice, but unless you are talking about engineering a bacteria that can somehow transform atoms of one element, say silicon, into atoms of another, you don't have the raw materials on Mars, at least in sufficient quantity to produce the effect you are wanting.
There is as much life in the earths crust as there is on the surface. It is therefore quite possible that there is a lot of life in the crust of Mars.
How does that logic work, exactly? Assuming that the Earth and Mars are similar enough to compare and that life on the surface is A and in the crust is B. You are saying that on Earth A = B but on Mars that A B, or specifically, since on Mars, to date, A=0, that 0=1. Again, how do you get to that point?
Likewise. I'd assumed that the move towards Unity was aimed at the 'future' ie tablets etc, and that the desktop was yesterday and was to be sidelined. Ubuntu seem to be totally lost at sea now, with what I see as a troubled tablet UI (Unity) and a rejected and stagnant desktop UI.
From day one, Canonical said Unity was not about tablets, but was to take advantage of computers being almost always connected to the internet and having screens wider than they are tall. Many in the Windows world have been moving the menu bar to the side of the screen for the latter reason. Many in the Linux world, running something other than Gnome 2 were doing so, likewise.
Being a tablet OS takes a lot more than just having a launcher with big buttons. You need to have an interface designed around touch and Unity was never designed for that. The KDE folks are designing KDE Active specifically for that and that is an approach that Ubuntu and even Gnome should have followed: have your core environment with a modular UI that can be made to fit the form factor and use scenario needed. Run KDE on the desktop, you get KDE plus plasma desktop. Run KDE on a netbook or small screen laptop, you get KDE plus plasma netbook. Run KDE on a tablet, you get KDE plus plasma active. One set of core technologies (KDE) but tailored to the interface needed, instead of a one size fits all (or one size fits nobody).
KDE seems poised to be able to handle desktop/laptop/tablet. I don't know how robust Gnome 3 extensions are and whether they will enable adaptations suitable for a tablet. Unity, however, never was designed for a tablet and seems a dead end in its current form. My recommendation for Canonical, would be to modify KDE to provide a Unity like experience (many have already done this, but it isn't as fully integrated as Unity is) and then build on KDE active for their tablet experience. Of course, that will be more difficult since they killed off Kubuntu, their KDE spin (luckily, Blue Systems picked them up and is supporting them, much more than Canonical ever did).
Microsoft once had the slogan "Where do you want to go?" Canonical should be asking themselves the same thing.
Yes, hope we'll see Ballmer as a MS leader for many more years. He'll drive the company into the ground.
Be careful what you wish for. The scenario you ask for would also most likely have Apple as the dominant player and I don't think Apple would be prone to make Microsoft's mistakes.
The bad thing is, Ubuntu was something of great value just four years ago. At the time, it was the only version of Linux that you could show someone out of the box and get them excited about using a new operating system. Part of the allure was beryl/compiz, but most of what made it special in the Linux world was that it played nicer with the mandatory binary blobs (like wireless firmware and graphics drivers). It was an acceptable compromise between the GNU way and everyone else.
And a lot of us geeks spread the gospel of Ubuntu to the unwashed masses. Now it's turned out that Ubuntu was a false prophet, so we're having to do a lot of damage control (and further explanations of why Ubuntu's off the deep end).
So, if Ubuntu had stayed with Gnome Shell, they wouldn't be a false prophet? I don't care for Unity, myself, but I don't see where Ubuntu defaulting to it negates the other pluses you mention.
Has the definition of cloud changed so much that it can even be done now, with a single server?
From the very beginning the cloud has always been the connection medium between point a and b it has nothing to do with what is on the end points. Think back to those plastic templates we used to draw network diagrams with. Once we went out onto a public network the shape was a cloud. Marketers, in recent years, jumped on that because referring to the internet and the web sounded so blah and they needed something new and exciting. Thus, we now have the cloud. New name, for the same thing.
As for whether you can host your data or not on a single server or you need multiple servers isn't really up to the cloud, it depends on your data. Whether you want to host it on a public server or your own (as in owncloud), is entirely up to you, too. The cloud doesn't care, because the cloud is just a bunch of packets streaming around the internet.
They pay a lot less per person than $1.
Obviously, you have never done multi-color bulk mailing. It cost more than $1 per person by the time you include paper, printing postage. Plus don't forget folding and stapling or folding and stuffing depending on if it is going in an envelope or not. And of course, it has to be pre-sorted by zip code, which usually is done by a mailing house (additional cost) and means a database needs to be maintained for addresses (another cost).
The only discount in bulk mailing over regular mailing is the actual postage cost is less, but the production costs are all the same and it adds up to more than $1 except for the smallest of mailings.
Uh, you could always contact people who hadn't approved you. It was called a friend request.
A friend request is not the same as actually sending them a message.
Since you are now selling access to me, why am I not getting a fiscal benefit as a result?
Is this different from Linkedin's paid messages as those are work/career context that has a precedent?
Is this different from Postal mail?
At least for your last question, "yes, this is different than postal mail." Postal mail is regulated by the federal government. This is not.
The suggestion was to charge a tenth of a penny per email. For regular folks who email, that works up to less than a penny per day. (No fees for business emails from private or hosted exchange servers, of course.) This would discourage spam emails and mass marketings from public accounts (although it wouldn't stop spam from zombie email accounts on private domains.)
A dollar per message should be enough to discourage irresponsible spamming.
A dollar per message is a lot cheaper than paying for printing and postage on bulk mail junk mail, even with the discounted bulk postage rate.
I realise they make money through ads but I suspect that won't last so they're seemingly looking for anyway to milk people. Sure it'll stop bulk spam but $1 is nothing to get your chance to be a total creep to some strange woman. On the bright side if creeping goes on that should kill FB.
$1 is pretty cheap considering how much bulk mailers pay for printing and postage to send you stuff via snail mail.
Before: Facebook keeps your contact information private only allowing people to contact you that you have approved.
Now: Facebook keeps your contact information private only allowing people to contact you that you have approved or have paid us.
Yeah, there is no way that new policy won't be abused.