Well, if you wanted to read content in English you'd set your browser's UI to English! Yes, that's apparently how Gizmodo determines which site you want to visit (someone from Portugal was sent to the Brazilian site; I see the American site even though I'm in Germany but I'm using a non-localized Firefox). Weird site.
- How about Eclipse as an IDE? That should be better than emacs and textmate for most things.
Even better: How about Komodo Edit? It's an IDE built mainly for web development, runs on Win/Mac/Linux and offers most things Eclipse has to offer to a web developer in a much lighter package.
And I agree that a web developer who runs into issues because the file system or scheduler behaves differently probably writes some very interesting websites. And not in a good way.
I find Apple's unibody keyboard (one model after yours) to be one of the best notebook keyboards on the market. The keys feel responsive, there is no mushiness at all, many other vendors still don't ship backlit keyboards... And the layout isn't exactly bad, either.
Okay, you've got two Command keys. Unlike the horrible Windows/Context Menu keys Microsoft has inflicted upon us, they're actually both useful and benign. I know that some people actually use those keys a lot but they're still superfluous - anything Win+X do can be accomplished by binding that function to a key sequence with a normal meta key. But my real gripe lies in the fact that these buttons do something when you press them on their own. Command doesn't do anything on its own, which makes it much less aggravating to accidentally hit than the "open Start menu" button, which steals your focus, eats wat you're typing and might cause you to accidentally launch random programs. Sure, Apple could have used just one Command key but what would you have put in that space? Another Control? Something entirely different? Given that Command is the single most important meta key in OS X it makes sense to gibe it some prominence. That's also why Control is moved out of the way: You need Command to access functions and Alt to type special characters but Control is basically just there for X11 apps and the terminal. Oh, and for an old way of right-clicking.
As for the rest... The Enter/Return key have been merged on newer models, making space for a second Alt (which doesn't do anything differently from the left one but Win users will appreciate it). Delete is where it's on every other keyboard that doesn't have a dedicated button for it, on Fn+Backspace. That's exactly where I'd expect it to be. I don't really miss PgUp/PgDn/Home/End; they are accessible via Fn+arrow keys and I don't use them enough to need them in hardware. The eject button makes sense since we're talking about a notebook keyboard here. Yes, Apple could have put the button on the side but I can't say I disagree with putting it a place where you aren't likely to accidentally press it while moving the device around.
While I'm on the topic of notebooks, unibody MBPs have the air intake inside the hinge; there are no side grilles anymore. The keyboard still isn't any bigger but that's because like any manufacturer Apple really likes standardized parts and thus they decided to make their keyboard small enough to fit inside the 13" models. As a 13" unibody MBP owner I'm fine with that.
There are issues with Apple keyboards, mostly due to some special characters being in different positions. When you switch between Standard 105 Button Keyboards and Apple keyboards a lot you're bound to confuse things. But then again, you can always set a different keyboard layout and be reasonably happy. And some thing just plain make sense, notably @ being moved from Alt-Q to Alt-L. Alt-Q is awfully close to Cmd-Q, which closes the application and thus is nothing you want anywhere near a commonly-typed character like @.
Well, I don't see many libraries in web development, especially on the JavaScript side. There are plenty of frameworks, though, ranging from large things like jQuery or Spring* to small things like functions for simple overlay windows that you call yourself. I just don't see the term "library" used even where it would be appropriate, like with the latter example.
My whole point is that while libraries are still around in traditional programming the term is used inflationary with some fairly basic libraries being elevated to framework status because it sounds better and with the term seemingly being rather unpopular in web development.
* I'm not implying that Spring is a JavaScript framework.
It's what used to be called a "library". "Framework" just sounds more enterprisey and, for some reason, is the only term for libraries anyone doing web development will recognize.
It's simple: If $COMPANY's business model can't cope with not being allowed to store user data for $DURATION then it's too bad for the company. Citizen interests should always trump corporate interests and privacy is in the interest of the citizen. If MSFT, GOOG or any other company relies on being able to mine you for years that doesn't mean everyone has a sacred duty to uphold their business model just because it exists. It's really like with the record companies - they can't comprehend that their business model might not work and would rather adapt society to them than vice versa.
(Of course a paid shill won't care but your post makes for a good entry point to the discussion.)
Admittedly I never designed my own processor (I only got as far as taking a few introductory chip design courses) but yes. I'm working on getting my university diploma (the only below-doctor degree Germany used to have) and I was exposed to a variety of languages over the course of my studies. C was mandatory, as were CSP, PROLOG and Haskell, even though the university was nominally Java-centric. C/C++ was used in a lot of courses, not just the basic "this is how an OS works" ones. (Assembler was only briefly touched on, though, as a side sbject to formal verification of program code.)
Now they've switched over to a master/bachelor system. When talking to people studying for the new degrees I'm horrified. The curriculum is essentially fixed, there's minimal choice and you can get a BSc without ever being exposed to any language other than Java. Yeah. That's going to give them deep insight into how programming works.
Note, however, that that will only work in Swastik 9.7 QTJ 'Zig', which comes with the new Gwitter-ready P8 fork Ad-Hominork which allows 10% higher mGNOPS when used in conjunction with HTMLVideoTranslator piped through the Hop Skip Bubblegum search engine VB GUI to hack all IPs simultaneously.
Several police laboratories have already expressed their interest.
If I have the ability to obtain a cert for one site (say, mycompany.com), I have the ability to obtain entirely valid certs for any site on Earth? And the only way to counteract this is to have browser vendors blacklist my keys in their next update? And that's the foundation HTTPS stands on? And alternative schemes that may address the problem aren't even considered by the browser vendors?
Wow. If I understand that correctly, web encryption is in a pretty bad shape as far as trustworthiness goes.
To be honest, it's still annoying for regular users who just happen to visit from work during their lunch break. Yes, I could log n every time and diligently check the "public terminal" checkbox but I don't really see why.
Of course what's more annoying is that the RSS feed is now apparently run by Twitter and only shows the first ~100 characters of each featured post, making it pointless to even load them in the first place. The "get more comments" thing can be circumvented by logging in; this can't.
I think the problem is not playing for so long without interruption but playing for so long before you get to the next usable outlet. For instance, a family could decide to go on vacation and little Billy in the backseat is going to get bored fast unless his 3DS is in working condition. A ten hour drive is not unreasonable. Yes, there are breaks during the travel and yes, there will probably be outlets during those breaks and the family might even be allowed to use them but Billy's father is probably not going to extend the lunch break to three and a half hours because the 3DS has gone flat.
Or they go camping and it turns out there's a whole week of outletlessness ahead. While Billy might not play all that much on his 3DS, ten hours spread out over a week are a more reasonable assumption than three.
I am aware that Billy can spend the time doing something besides playing with his 3DS but he'd probably prefer not being forced to do so.
Don't assume that there are no such cults outside religion. There are plenty of people who operate on an unsubstantiated belief of some sort, whether that belief is "God exists", "the Middle East will always be unstable" or "we'll achieve breakeven on hydrogen fusion within the next fifteen years". Yes, hydrogen fusion is something we can observe but a working fusion power plant using today's designs isn't. Likewise things like string theory (mathematically possible but as far as I know nobody has yet proven it actually applies to the universe). Everytime someone just assumes that somehing nontrivial is true you have an example of faith.
Christianity is, of course, a rather large memeplex compared to, say, "light is both a particle and a wave" (for people who don't have the neccessary means and knowledge to independently verify that*). However, most people just take a subset of it and believe in that. Even less is the subset of it that actually applies to their daily lives. Christianity offers many answers but most of them are to questions that don't concern most people, like "What happens to me after I die?". (And no, "Where does man come from?" does not qualify. Everyone sane agrees that the creation stories in the Bible are allegories made by people who didn't have paleontology.)
More importantly, faith just isn't that important to most people. Even those who do believe that God exists (or who just observe Pascal's Wager) usually just apply the fundamental tenets to their lives (conveniently, those are the same tenets our society is built around) and only concern themselves with the rest if the need arises. The existence of an unknowable superbeing is essentially a matter of opinion.
How many people do you know who "just know" that Linux is superior/inferior to the NT kernel? Or that nuclear power is inherently safe/unsafe? Or even "God doesn't exist", which is belief just like the opposite? Usually those are similar cases of someone taking a meme or memeplex and just assuming it to be true. According to your reasoning, that would make all of us insane; at least I know nobody who doesn' believe anything they haven't verified themselves.
For the record, as far as the Christian god is concerned I don't believe either way; I'm agnostic. There may be one or more deities but I don't know and I will most likely never find out.
* Yes, we can just point at the peer-reviewed papers regarding that topic but then we end up with the meme of "peer review ensures good science", which is another example of something usually just asserted to be true that would be a major hassle to independently verify.
No, I think it's just that since sane Christians are rarely talked about, the insane ones are the ones hogging the average Slashdotter's perception of active Christians. It's really like with regular people and things like nuclear power. You don't hear about when a power plant works exactly as advertised but every one that doesn't gets a lot of media attention. Since images of failing, dirty and/or dangerous NPPs dominate the public's perception it's hard to blame the public for thinking that NPPs are inherently dangerous, dirty and constantly on the verge of failing.
Since the numbers of stories about sane believers and batshit ones aren't even remotely proportional to the number of people in each group it can be hard to get a proper sense of scale. In fact, this cuts both ways: Because sane Christians aren't as news-worthy we don't talk about them as much (in the context of their religious beliefs), which might give the impression that Slashdot has a more negative view of Christianity as a whole than it actually has.
Besides, Me was a bit like Vista - virtually everyone who had it had it because it came with their computer. If you weren't satisfied with Windows 98, Windows 2000 was the obvious upgrade path, being superior in every area but DOS support.
Ever tried OS X? Yes, there are no cheap Macs and Apple isn't exactly the nicest company either but you do get a Unix with a very nice GUI. Admittedly, the latter is subject to taste but they did put a lot of thought into it and it shows. I like customizing the hell out of the Linux DEs I use but OS X meshes well enough with how I work that I can live with the lack of customizability - although that too is highly subjective, of course.
Modern Windows is... different... from the Windows of yore but whenever I use it I get annoyed by the fact that things you take for granted on Linux just aren't there without third-party software. grep, for instance. Also, Windows is the land of developer-side customization where every second program seems to ship with its own set of widgets that look differently (and sometimes are placed differently) than everywhere else and don't obey system settings. So, depending on the program, you have even less control over your GUI than under Linux.
It really depends on the user. My dad doesn't know a whole lot about computers. He want his internet, his email, his office and his Solitaire. If there are problems, he usually can't fix them by himself. However, he's still capable of learning new UIs to a degree. When his netbook's Win XP installation was becoming unbearably slow we replaced it with Ubuntu Netbook Edition. Since he was already using Firefox, Thunderbird and OpenOffice everything he needed to relearn were the launcher, the file dialogs and the Solitaire game's UI. Within a week he was at home in his new OS.
Now it turns out that Network Manager has a weird bug that causes it to generate broken automatic settings for the wireless NIC. Since my dad is sick of having to delete those on every boot and my older brother has offered to turn the netbook into a Hackintosh (taking over the maintenance duties) that's what we'll do. I expect my dad to learn the new UI within a week or two. Well, after we found him a decent Solitaire.
I know that there are people who are afraid to move away from Windows 98 because they get confused when things aren't exactly the same in newer versions. Some could easily learn a new UI but simply refuse to. But not all non-technical and/or senior users are like that. Some just don't want to learn more than they need to in order to use their computer for their usual tasks but when presented with a new way of doing so (and some encouragement), they learn that new way and continue with their lives.
Why would I want a WP7 phone? Let's look at the ads:
Apple: Look, we've got an ultra-stylish phone with more cameras than you can shake a stick at that does everything you might possibly want to do with a computing device.
Android vendors: Apple already explained what a smartphone does so we don't have to. Expect similar stuff from us.
RIM: Our phones are made for businessmen but they work for everyone.
Microsoft: Are you sick of spending a lot of time checking your Twitter and Facebook with your smartphone's browser? Be glad because we built a device exclusively around efficiently interfacing with social media!
I don't spend enough time on Facebook to need a dedicated Facebook interface, ergo I don't need WP7. Case closed. (Seriously, I don't know if WP7 even has an app store. It might, but at least Microsoft's German ads suggest that it's a very focused device.)
Of course there are usage patterns for which even such services would make only a negligible dent in storage requirements. For example, user-generated content is unlikely to be streamed on-demand and such content can grow to quite significant sizes. When I was more actively involved with Neverwinter Nights I had about ten gigabytes worth of hakpaks, modules and the related pizzazz on my hard drive. A few total conversions can make a game install huge.
Likewise with selfmade music or movies. A high-quality sample library here, a few hours of uncompressed video there and you're in the market for another 2 TB hard drive. For a regular consumer scenario where you just take something, consume it and then toss it off the system 320 GB seem like a lot. For scenarios where you intend on keeping things (even good, large mods can just drop off the internet) or even make them yourself, 320 GB is pretty small (claustrophobic if you're filming a lot).
Hard drives will stay for a good while until we have figured out how to cheaply build reasonably reliable SSDs an order of magnitude denser than today's. The markets will be different and SSDs will steal a good deal of even today's HDD market but they don't cater to all needs yet.
(That's also ignoring the fact that in some areas a model where you download several dozen gigabytes in one day (say, one HD movie) at appropriate speeds isn't going to go over well with ISPs who already have trouble keeping up with today's demand.)
The only hard part about OpenWRT or DD-WRT is the installation. Everything else is on par with other firmwares, save for the fact that you get more functionality and thus more options. If the firmware comes preinstalled they can slap on an interface that hides 3/4 of the options behind an "advanced functions" page and boom, instant super-capable consumer-grade router with no more hassle than every other router on the market.
Yeah, a few ads would be less annoying than huge "A DESPERATE PLEA OF WIKIPEDIA FOUNDER JIMBO WALES FOR YOUR MONEY!!!!!" banners. They could eve do like Slashdot does and turn off ads for people who either pay for the privilege or earn it through delivering a lot of high-quaity content.
Which is how Wikipedia should work, basically. If an article isn't up to snuff the admin is supposed to first request improvements and only mark it for deletion if nobody showed up to change it. Of course that doesn't keep admins form just marking an article for deletion right away. Even explicitly refuting the reason for the deletion request might mean nothing if the admin just plain doesn't like the article.
Depending on the people involved, "marked for deletion" can mean "I don't think we can save this article but feel free to convince me otherwise" or "I need to wait a week before I can kick this off the wiki but that doesn't mean you can change my mind".
Slashdot Mirror
I think that "Whoa Is Me" would be the perfect name for his autobiography...
Well, if you wanted to read content in English you'd set your browser's UI to English! Yes, that's apparently how Gizmodo determines which site you want to visit (someone from Portugal was sent to the Brazilian site; I see the American site even though I'm in Germany but I'm using a non-localized Firefox). Weird site.
- How about Eclipse as an IDE? That should be better than emacs and textmate for most things.
Even better: How about Komodo Edit? It's an IDE built mainly for web development, runs on Win/Mac/Linux and offers most things Eclipse has to offer to a web developer in a much lighter package.
And I agree that a web developer who runs into issues because the file system or scheduler behaves differently probably writes some very interesting websites. And not in a good way.
I find Apple's unibody keyboard (one model after yours) to be one of the best notebook keyboards on the market. The keys feel responsive, there is no mushiness at all, many other vendors still don't ship backlit keyboards... And the layout isn't exactly bad, either.
Okay, you've got two Command keys. Unlike the horrible Windows/Context Menu keys Microsoft has inflicted upon us, they're actually both useful and benign. I know that some people actually use those keys a lot but they're still superfluous - anything Win+X do can be accomplished by binding that function to a key sequence with a normal meta key. But my real gripe lies in the fact that these buttons do something when you press them on their own. Command doesn't do anything on its own, which makes it much less aggravating to accidentally hit than the "open Start menu" button, which steals your focus, eats wat you're typing and might cause you to accidentally launch random programs. Sure, Apple could have used just one Command key but what would you have put in that space? Another Control? Something entirely different? Given that Command is the single most important meta key in OS X it makes sense to gibe it some prominence. That's also why Control is moved out of the way: You need Command to access functions and Alt to type special characters but Control is basically just there for X11 apps and the terminal. Oh, and for an old way of right-clicking.
As for the rest... The Enter/Return key have been merged on newer models, making space for a second Alt (which doesn't do anything differently from the left one but Win users will appreciate it). Delete is where it's on every other keyboard that doesn't have a dedicated button for it, on Fn+Backspace. That's exactly where I'd expect it to be. I don't really miss PgUp/PgDn/Home/End; they are accessible via Fn+arrow keys and I don't use them enough to need them in hardware. The eject button makes sense since we're talking about a notebook keyboard here. Yes, Apple could have put the button on the side but I can't say I disagree with putting it a place where you aren't likely to accidentally press it while moving the device around.
While I'm on the topic of notebooks, unibody MBPs have the air intake inside the hinge; there are no side grilles anymore. The keyboard still isn't any bigger but that's because like any manufacturer Apple really likes standardized parts and thus they decided to make their keyboard small enough to fit inside the 13" models. As a 13" unibody MBP owner I'm fine with that.
There are issues with Apple keyboards, mostly due to some special characters being in different positions. When you switch between Standard 105 Button Keyboards and Apple keyboards a lot you're bound to confuse things. But then again, you can always set a different keyboard layout and be reasonably happy. And some thing just plain make sense, notably @ being moved from Alt-Q to Alt-L. Alt-Q is awfully close to Cmd-Q, which closes the application and thus is nothing you want anywhere near a commonly-typed character like @.
Well, I don't see many libraries in web development, especially on the JavaScript side. There are plenty of frameworks, though, ranging from large things like jQuery or Spring* to small things like functions for simple overlay windows that you call yourself. I just don't see the term "library" used even where it would be appropriate, like with the latter example.
My whole point is that while libraries are still around in traditional programming the term is used inflationary with some fairly basic libraries being elevated to framework status because it sounds better and with the term seemingly being rather unpopular in web development.
* I'm not implying that Spring is a JavaScript framework.
It's what used to be called a "library". "Framework" just sounds more enterprisey and, for some reason, is the only term for libraries anyone doing web development will recognize.
It's simple: If $COMPANY's business model can't cope with not being allowed to store user data for $DURATION then it's too bad for the company. Citizen interests should always trump corporate interests and privacy is in the interest of the citizen. If MSFT, GOOG or any other company relies on being able to mine you for years that doesn't mean everyone has a sacred duty to uphold their business model just because it exists. It's really like with the record companies - they can't comprehend that their business model might not work and would rather adapt society to them than vice versa.
(Of course a paid shill won't care but your post makes for a good entry point to the discussion.)
Admittedly I never designed my own processor (I only got as far as taking a few introductory chip design courses) but yes. I'm working on getting my university diploma (the only below-doctor degree Germany used to have) and I was exposed to a variety of languages over the course of my studies. C was mandatory, as were CSP, PROLOG and Haskell, even though the university was nominally Java-centric. C/C++ was used in a lot of courses, not just the basic "this is how an OS works" ones. (Assembler was only briefly touched on, though, as a side sbject to formal verification of program code.)
Now they've switched over to a master/bachelor system. When talking to people studying for the new degrees I'm horrified. The curriculum is essentially fixed, there's minimal choice and you can get a BSc without ever being exposed to any language other than Java. Yeah. That's going to give them deep insight into how programming works.
Note, however, that that will only work in Swastik 9.7 QTJ 'Zig', which comes with the new Gwitter-ready P8 fork Ad-Hominork which allows 10% higher mGNOPS when used in conjunction with HTMLVideoTranslator piped through the Hop Skip Bubblegum search engine VB GUI to hack all IPs simultaneously.
Several police laboratories have already expressed their interest.
Let me get this straight.
If I have the ability to obtain a cert for one site (say, mycompany.com), I have the ability to obtain entirely valid certs for any site on Earth? And the only way to counteract this is to have browser vendors blacklist my keys in their next update? And that's the foundation HTTPS stands on? And alternative schemes that may address the problem aren't even considered by the browser vendors?
Wow. If I understand that correctly, web encryption is in a pretty bad shape as far as trustworthiness goes.
To be honest, it's still annoying for regular users who just happen to visit from work during their lunch break. Yes, I could log n every time and diligently check the "public terminal" checkbox but I don't really see why.
Of course what's more annoying is that the RSS feed is now apparently run by Twitter and only shows the first ~100 characters of each featured post, making it pointless to even load them in the first place. The "get more comments" thing can be circumvented by logging in; this can't.
I think the problem is not playing for so long without interruption but playing for so long before you get to the next usable outlet. For instance, a family could decide to go on vacation and little Billy in the backseat is going to get bored fast unless his 3DS is in working condition. A ten hour drive is not unreasonable. Yes, there are breaks during the travel and yes, there will probably be outlets during those breaks and the family might even be allowed to use them but Billy's father is probably not going to extend the lunch break to three and a half hours because the 3DS has gone flat.
Or they go camping and it turns out there's a whole week of outletlessness ahead. While Billy might not play all that much on his 3DS, ten hours spread out over a week are a more reasonable assumption than three.
I am aware that Billy can spend the time doing something besides playing with his 3DS but he'd probably prefer not being forced to do so.
A Matchbox tractor.
Don't assume that there are no such cults outside religion. There are plenty of people who operate on an unsubstantiated belief of some sort, whether that belief is "God exists", "the Middle East will always be unstable" or "we'll achieve breakeven on hydrogen fusion within the next fifteen years". Yes, hydrogen fusion is something we can observe but a working fusion power plant using today's designs isn't. Likewise things like string theory (mathematically possible but as far as I know nobody has yet proven it actually applies to the universe). Everytime someone just assumes that somehing nontrivial is true you have an example of faith.
Christianity is, of course, a rather large memeplex compared to, say, "light is both a particle and a wave" (for people who don't have the neccessary means and knowledge to independently verify that*). However, most people just take a subset of it and believe in that. Even less is the subset of it that actually applies to their daily lives. Christianity offers many answers but most of them are to questions that don't concern most people, like "What happens to me after I die?". (And no, "Where does man come from?" does not qualify. Everyone sane agrees that the creation stories in the Bible are allegories made by people who didn't have paleontology.)
More importantly, faith just isn't that important to most people. Even those who do believe that God exists (or who just observe Pascal's Wager) usually just apply the fundamental tenets to their lives (conveniently, those are the same tenets our society is built around) and only concern themselves with the rest if the need arises. The existence of an unknowable superbeing is essentially a matter of opinion.
How many people do you know who "just know" that Linux is superior/inferior to the NT kernel? Or that nuclear power is inherently safe/unsafe? Or even "God doesn't exist", which is belief just like the opposite? Usually those are similar cases of someone taking a meme or memeplex and just assuming it to be true. According to your reasoning, that would make all of us insane; at least I know nobody who doesn' believe anything they haven't verified themselves.
For the record, as far as the Christian god is concerned I don't believe either way; I'm agnostic. There may be one or more deities but I don't know and I will most likely never find out.
* Yes, we can just point at the peer-reviewed papers regarding that topic but then we end up with the meme of "peer review ensures good science", which is another example of something usually just asserted to be true that would be a major hassle to independently verify.
No, I think it's just that since sane Christians are rarely talked about, the insane ones are the ones hogging the average Slashdotter's perception of active Christians. It's really like with regular people and things like nuclear power. You don't hear about when a power plant works exactly as advertised but every one that doesn't gets a lot of media attention. Since images of failing, dirty and/or dangerous NPPs dominate the public's perception it's hard to blame the public for thinking that NPPs are inherently dangerous, dirty and constantly on the verge of failing.
Since the numbers of stories about sane believers and batshit ones aren't even remotely proportional to the number of people in each group it can be hard to get a proper sense of scale. In fact, this cuts both ways: Because sane Christians aren't as news-worthy we don't talk about them as much (in the context of their religious beliefs), which might give the impression that Slashdot has a more negative view of Christianity as a whole than it actually has.
Besides, Me was a bit like Vista - virtually everyone who had it had it because it came with their computer. If you weren't satisfied with Windows 98, Windows 2000 was the obvious upgrade path, being superior in every area but DOS support.
All versions of Acrobat Reader with Tubular Bells playing in the background? It would fit...
Ever tried OS X? Yes, there are no cheap Macs and Apple isn't exactly the nicest company either but you do get a Unix with a very nice GUI. Admittedly, the latter is subject to taste but they did put a lot of thought into it and it shows. I like customizing the hell out of the Linux DEs I use but OS X meshes well enough with how I work that I can live with the lack of customizability - although that too is highly subjective, of course.
Modern Windows is... different... from the Windows of yore but whenever I use it I get annoyed by the fact that things you take for granted on Linux just aren't there without third-party software. grep, for instance. Also, Windows is the land of developer-side customization where every second program seems to ship with its own set of widgets that look differently (and sometimes are placed differently) than everywhere else and don't obey system settings. So, depending on the program, you have even less control over your GUI than under Linux.
Known side-effects of exposure to liquid classified data include knowing too much and extradition to Sweden.
It really depends on the user. My dad doesn't know a whole lot about computers. He want his internet, his email, his office and his Solitaire. If there are problems, he usually can't fix them by himself. However, he's still capable of learning new UIs to a degree. When his netbook's Win XP installation was becoming unbearably slow we replaced it with Ubuntu Netbook Edition. Since he was already using Firefox, Thunderbird and OpenOffice everything he needed to relearn were the launcher, the file dialogs and the Solitaire game's UI. Within a week he was at home in his new OS.
Now it turns out that Network Manager has a weird bug that causes it to generate broken automatic settings for the wireless NIC. Since my dad is sick of having to delete those on every boot and my older brother has offered to turn the netbook into a Hackintosh (taking over the maintenance duties) that's what we'll do. I expect my dad to learn the new UI within a week or two. Well, after we found him a decent Solitaire.
I know that there are people who are afraid to move away from Windows 98 because they get confused when things aren't exactly the same in newer versions. Some could easily learn a new UI but simply refuse to. But not all non-technical and/or senior users are like that. Some just don't want to learn more than they need to in order to use their computer for their usual tasks but when presented with a new way of doing so (and some encouragement), they learn that new way and continue with their lives.
Why would I want a WP7 phone? Let's look at the ads:
Apple: Look, we've got an ultra-stylish phone with more cameras than you can shake a stick at that does everything you might possibly want to do with a computing device.
Android vendors: Apple already explained what a smartphone does so we don't have to. Expect similar stuff from us.
RIM: Our phones are made for businessmen but they work for everyone.
Microsoft: Are you sick of spending a lot of time checking your Twitter and Facebook with your smartphone's browser? Be glad because we built a device exclusively around efficiently interfacing with social media!
I don't spend enough time on Facebook to need a dedicated Facebook interface, ergo I don't need WP7. Case closed. (Seriously, I don't know if WP7 even has an app store. It might, but at least Microsoft's German ads suggest that it's a very focused device.)
Of course there are usage patterns for which even such services would make only a negligible dent in storage requirements. For example, user-generated content is unlikely to be streamed on-demand and such content can grow to quite significant sizes. When I was more actively involved with Neverwinter Nights I had about ten gigabytes worth of hakpaks, modules and the related pizzazz on my hard drive. A few total conversions can make a game install huge.
Likewise with selfmade music or movies. A high-quality sample library here, a few hours of uncompressed video there and you're in the market for another 2 TB hard drive. For a regular consumer scenario where you just take something, consume it and then toss it off the system 320 GB seem like a lot. For scenarios where you intend on keeping things (even good, large mods can just drop off the internet) or even make them yourself, 320 GB is pretty small (claustrophobic if you're filming a lot).
Hard drives will stay for a good while until we have figured out how to cheaply build reasonably reliable SSDs an order of magnitude denser than today's. The markets will be different and SSDs will steal a good deal of even today's HDD market but they don't cater to all needs yet.
(That's also ignoring the fact that in some areas a model where you download several dozen gigabytes in one day (say, one HD movie) at appropriate speeds isn't going to go over well with ISPs who already have trouble keeping up with today's demand.)
The only hard part about OpenWRT or DD-WRT is the installation. Everything else is on par with other firmwares, save for the fact that you get more functionality and thus more options. If the firmware comes preinstalled they can slap on an interface that hides 3/4 of the options behind an "advanced functions" page and boom, instant super-capable consumer-grade router with no more hassle than every other router on the market.
Yeah, a few ads would be less annoying than huge "A DESPERATE PLEA OF WIKIPEDIA FOUNDER JIMBO WALES FOR YOUR MONEY!!!!!" banners. They could eve do like Slashdot does and turn off ads for people who either pay for the privilege or earn it through delivering a lot of high-quaity content.
Which is how Wikipedia should work, basically. If an article isn't up to snuff the admin is supposed to first request improvements and only mark it for deletion if nobody showed up to change it. Of course that doesn't keep admins form just marking an article for deletion right away. Even explicitly refuting the reason for the deletion request might mean nothing if the admin just plain doesn't like the article.
Depending on the people involved, "marked for deletion" can mean "I don't think we can save this article but feel free to convince me otherwise" or "I need to wait a week before I can kick this off the wiki but that doesn't mean you can change my mind".