That's pretty disingenuous given that my Palm Treo had touch and no stylus in 2004. It was Windows Mobile 6.0, then upgraded to 6.5. Apple's advantage is that they had no legacy products or expectations to maintain so they could start over with a clean interface. When other manufacturers saw how clean it was they realized they had to put away their legacy products and move forward and we're all the better for it.
Additionaly, my Palm Treo had rounded corners! I used the screen lock so it didn't make calls. When in call it would go to the dial screen so you woudn't navigate the phone unlike earlier versions when you could find half typed contacts with your ear doing all the work. The built in SIP client was cool as hell too! The proximity sensor was just another method of dealing the same in-call or in-pocket problems which was a nice evolutionary step but hardly ground breaking or non-obvious.
I give Apple a lot of credit for shaking up the landscape and producing a polished product but this lawsuit seems ridiculous. When you're dealing with the shape of a calculator, its hard to think the form factor should be patent worthy.
Out of curioisity, do you understand what the actual purpose of the federal government is? It sure looks like you don't or you woudn't be advocating that states overrule the federal government.
So many people have this backwards that it truly scares me. It is the job of the federal government to secure borders, not the job of local municipalaties which could start armed conflicts with another country. It is not up to individual states to determine foreign policy, otherwise Texas could declare war on China and the whole U.S. would have to deal with the consequences.
I get that states should have the right to govern with minimal interference but when it comes to immigration it's no longer a single state making a decision. There is no federal law stating that you can't have marijuana dispensaries so it's up to Colorado or California to determine if that is what they want. Hell, here in Arizona we are starting to get dispensaries of our own!
Long story short, Arizona is out of step with the majority, because the majority knows that a state's rights end where another states begins. Arizona militarizing the border makes for a problems that Texas, New Mexico, and California may not be prepared to handle, this makes it a federal issue.
How do you come to this conclusion? Jmorris positted that wealth would be transferred to 3rd world countries, leaving the U.S. an impoverished socialist hell hole. That is pretty hard to reconcile, like environmental consciousness is something that only socialists would support which is patently absurd.
Where is the proposal for one world government? Where is the proposal for a police state coming from greenies?
Perhaps most importantly, how is an efficient use of resources a bad thing?
It's pointless to attack the facts, the debate should move on to what we can realistically do about it. Society doesn't have to be dismantled, but the South Carolina approach of ignoring scientific measurement because it's inconvenient isn't going to help anybody. The oceans will rise and pretending they won't is just assinine. We should be prepared for the things to come instead of ignoring what is in front of our faces.
And of course, those professions you reference make more in return for the further education required. That's why I said the parent had it almost right. But of course the discussion is different when we're talking about good teachers versus bad teachers. Good teachers are doing a lot during the summer and use their own money to augment school supplies. Most people are so blinded by the bad teachers that they royally screw over the good teachers who genuinely want to provide a good education to their students. I've seen so many teachers get beat down trying to do the right thing that its no wonder there is no shortage of bad teachers. There is no reward for being a good one! Either way you get demonized.
My position is obviously biased though, much of my family are teachers. They work a lot of hours outside the class room.
That's largely fair given the current environment, Ben an Jerry's and indeed, money companies based out of Vermont have also seen corporations as for the good of the people. Ben and Jerry's was the shining beacon of corporate responsibility, routinely giving back to the communities which made it strong. It's investors didn't have a problem with this because the positive perception of the company helped open a lot of doors.
The same goes for the company I work for today, routinely we are the most charitable company in the state in proportion to our income. Corporate responsibility doesn't have to destroy the bottom line. Good will means that some companies clamor to work with us, it's very good for our bottom line.
The rules should be modified however as you are definitely correct, there is very little direct financial incentive for companies to behave responsibly. Most people that run particularly large organizations don't see or understand soft dollars despite how their Six Sigma certifications should teach them to think.
What is this based on? As someone that has many many familiy members who went on to become teachers, none of them have more money than they can shake a stick at, many also have their masters degree. My mother was a teacher for 30 years, 25 of them with a masters degree. Within 3 years of being an IT professional I was making more than she was by a long shot. I don't know any teachers driving Mercedes unless they are at the university level.
There are some seriously screwed up districts out their but they are not the only possible outcome. Teachers are also not allowed to become intellectually lazy as you say given that they need to either take additional classes or do 180 hours of professional development to get recertified to teach. This is an ongoing process.
It's not hard to Google something. Of course parent had is almost right, to renew your teaching certification you do have to have 12 college hours or 180 hours of professional development activities. The certificate is good for 6 years in Arizona although this varies from state to state.
Many teachers will also tutor in the summer months, this is also why a lot of teachers starting out are also in the service industry. I don't understand all the hate towards teachers. They aren't paid a lot for all the bullshit they have to deal with. I have to deal with a lot of bullshit too but I'm paid in relation to how much I have to deal with.
Everytime I see that it makes me cringe. Corporations are collections of people, people can be immoral and so can corporations. Do you believe widespread genecide to be immoral or amoral just because it's a collection of people doing it instead of an individual? The action is immoral, not the actor. An actor is believe to be immoral when the sum of his or her actions are immoral. It works the same whether it's some guy named Victor or Apple. Of course Apple is far from the only immoral actor in this business.
While I agree that there is a more civil way to disagree you are wrong. If iPhone is connected to an HDCP compliant device then you are in the same boat regardless of the connector you use. I'm not sure what content on the iPhone is locked using HDCP but most content I would put on such a device is not locked and thus can be split. HDMI 1.4 does not say you cannot down convert in it's spec, that is left up to content usage of HDCP to determine.
Honestly I see little reason for the proprietary connector other than ensuring that the Apple ecosystem remains the Apple ecosystem which has proved in the past to be a lucrative market so it's no suprise to see Apple bucking the trend of every other phone manufacturer out there.
I like your optimism that the American dream is still alive but you're also delusional if you don't think the lower income people are under full assault right now. Rather than set taxes to pre-Bush era the fight is simply to cut programs that were created and solvent prior to the Bush tax cuts which Obama extended. Given the amont of rhetoric coming from the Republican party which has a significant amount of influence over what is going on these days, I find it hard to just scoff at the idea that lower income people aren't being taken advantage of. When tax disparity is as high as it is these days it's really hard to draw another conclusion.
Also, as someone who started his own business more than a decade ago and I pretty easily state that it is significantly harder to start up and become successful these days. Unless you start with money it is becoming an NBA allstar odds type of game. Sure, it still happens but it's few and far between, like people that drop out of college and become billionaires.
Most of the time big money comes from other big money. Look at yesterdays story about the people behind Dragon Dictate. They got swollowed up by large coprorations that simply raped them. They aren't alone in this practice.
The post-WW2 era was about major prosperity and growth. Since the late 90s it has been about globalizing infrastructure and socializing losses. When you or I make a bad investment we lose our investment, when Sheldon Ayers does, he changes the laws and fixes the reason he didn't make money and then not only loses nothing but gains billions.
Wake up! Rich people aren't evil, they are just given too much power and do what anybody with too much power does.
Except that Windows 95 had several releases. The first of which you are correct, there was only USB support, in 95b and by 95c there was full USB support which was of course carried over to Windows 98. The first iMac was released in 1998.
I don't know anyone on the PC side that thought of USB as as useless. Everyone liked the idea of a universal port but lamented the lack of adoption. Thunderbolt in is the same boat currently. It won't replace the simplicity of USB but it's great as a docking station port and the ability to hook up an external video card for my laptop. Anything that needs truly high speed connectivity will work great with Thunderbolt connecting directly to the bus while USB in is protected land.
You are correct that the basic point was to teach about recessive and dominant genes but you witness mutation so it becomes part of the discussion. I don't understand why it became controversial, in my class there was a brief discussion before diving into the science about creation and non-science answeres. My teacher said some people choose to believe that, but we're going to show you the process and you can decide for yourself which is the better argument.
I went to a public high school in Vermont in the late 90s and science was as you described. Evolution wasn't a question because we worked with fruit flies and selectively paired them to achieve a desired outcome. This taught you what evolution was and that it was real. It isn't hard to think that if I could make it happen in a few weeks in school that nature surely could accomplish a lot given a few billion.
I agree though, science is a process and you should teach the process. That's what was done for me though so I'm not sure if my experience was very similar to what appears to be the majority of other schools out there. My graduating class was maybe 200 students so it wasn't exactly a big school, you actually knew your teachers though. My chemistry teacher in high school was crazy, but his passion for the subject lead to some fascinating experiments which almost always proved the math done beforehand. That's what I always liked about that class, teach the abstract, then show the real life association with the abstract math.
Some people still didn't care about science but I feel like everyone got at least a decent education and could tell you the basics even years later.
That is one of the most sane explanations I've heard in a long time. Unions are a great idea and vital to the interests of even non-union employees. It's crazy to me the lack of regard for history that led to the formation of unions to begin with. Seems these days some unions have gone too far while others do as you say and protect people that aren't up to standards. The thing is, in every case where it seems the company can't afford to sustain their union staff the unions seem to see reason and accept pay cuts as was the case in Wisconsin.
You're right though, the issue is very complicated.
Of course you also can't prove a negative. There is plenty of science that isn't based on observation directly. Theoretical physics for one, along with most of the quantum theory and string theory. They are still attempint to prove a positive though and using observation to affirm or disprove their hypothesis.
I wouldn't put a blanket statement that all religious people don't understand science though. I know plenty of doctors and research scientists that believe in a higher power but also believe we evolved over millions of years or are agnostic towards god having any involved which this poll doesn't seem to cover.
Given that it's a staff of one I beg to differ. Also note, Chrome OS still uses the same tools, it just uses cloud storage. Windows 8 will be the same way if you choose to run it that way with Skydrive. I've never seen a thin client setup that didn't take you to a familiar interface. SaaS can be a number of things, Office 365 is one example, and then there is the Adobe model, with the Adobe model you are running the same software on a machine with proper specs to handle the task at hand.
Every thin client I've encountered from back in the day to present day gave you a native interface. Even thin clients back to an AS/400 with text based forms provide you the same interface whether you use a laptop with full software stack or a thin client. A virtual desktop is just the logical extension of this.
So in short, I'm not sure what you think a thin client is. From banks to insurance companies to my own infrastructure it doesn't line up.
If you're talking about strictly web-based SaaS then Office 365 can still be an attack vector for malware. I don't see corporate computers going 100% web due to restrictions when you're traveling. By the time SaaS catches up to allow offline use you circle back to beefier machines and the cycle continues.
For me, the vast majority of users get a cheap $300ish thin client, the traveling users get a real laptop with SSL VPN and connect using a Citrix receiver. It works fast over the Internet, if they are completely offline then they can operate their virtual desktop locally, it will sync back to the server when it gets back to the Internet. This isn't hard, is exceedingly easy to back up, and is much more efficient due to being able to hop over to a spare thin client if your laptop dies.
I'm not sure where you are getting your information from but every thin client being deployed today is usually either RDP, VNC, VMWare VDI, or Citrix. RDP and VNC are giving way to virtual desktop streaming due to it being a whole lot more flexible. The whole reason desktops came back into fashioned was because of the over dependence on a terminal server. If you are out in the field then you need a complex setup VPN setup to secure everything if such a thing is even allowed. With VDI in place you have a much simpler web portal with a myriad of encryption and authentication options.
The "point" of the "cloud" is to abstract the work from the hardware that it is running on. If you experience hardware failure you should be able to connect from another machine and pick up where you left off. The same goes with a hardware failure at the server level. There is nothing new about cloud computing. It's a stack of tools designed to smooth out deployment.
When I connect to the cloud, guess what I'm doing? I'm using RDP into Amazon to control a virtual Windows server. When I'm using SQL Azure I'm connecting to a SQL server the same as I would anyway. The only difference is that the SQL server is load balanced and distributed across multiple servers. Of course then we're getting into cloud services for back office infrastructure which is a bit off topic.
Let's be clear, IT Desktop support will change but certainly won't go away because ultimately people want and need access to their web browser, they'll want fast access to their files, they'll want clustered computing resources for 3d rendering, all of this can only be done in a VDI environment, RDP and VNC are insufficient for those tasks.
Our thin clients have USB webcams hooked to them which passes through to their virtual desktop. When they take a picture the image is saved inside the virtual desktop to servers that are in a data center in the same building even when the webcam is 3000 miles away. It's the same speed whether they are at HQ or in Fiji. That is the point of the cloud.
What thin clients did you go with that were Win7 based? Hell, all of ours are ARM based linux boxen connecting to Citrix XenDesktop where they have their familiar Windows environment.
How so? Just because the server is running a linux hypervisor doesn't mean the resulting Windows virtual desktop is any different to manage. You still need centralized patch management and scripting. Backing up the user world becomes a whole lot simpler though as you don't need any fancy folder redirection or roaming profiles. This makes it look more flexible to the end user and makes it easier for SysAdmins.
I feel dirty making a case for cloud technologies. Of course in my case, the cloud is local, in my datacenter and under my control. If I need more horsepower temporarily and it's not sensitive in nature I can scale out to Amazon or the likes. Odds are it's easier for me just to add another node to the cluster though. Cheaper too in my experience. Of course I don't throw away a lot money on consultants when I can just set it all up myself.
While I agree with your premise as accurate, I don't agree with the conclusion. There will always be a need for the "how do I do this?" support that desktop support often fields. Around here at least, the majority of support is not fixing things but helping people figure out how to do something. A cloud won't change any of that.
Given that you can take your virtual desktop offline and on the road with you I'm not so sure it'll swing back. From a corporate perspective it's a no brainer. When you abstract the work from the hardware a lot of options that never existed before gain traction. My favorite example is fully 3d capable Autocad running on an iPad. I hate the iPad but it's pretty cool to take the tablet to the meeting, mark-up your changes, then connect to your virtual desktop from your workstation and continue where you left off.
The owner of the company routinely goes from his phone, to tablet, to Mac, to Windows at his desk, and never thinks twice. He's always got his desktop with fast local access to network resources. It's a combination that's hard to beat.
You might have a point if you assume that everyone is using the same cloud and not their own private clouds. As someone deploying Virtual Desktops far and wide I can safely say that cloud services make a huge difference on end-point costs as well as reducing downtime associated with pouring coffee on a laptop.
I like the idea that hardware failure isn't going to stop me in my tracks. Windows 8 cloud integration doesn't strike me as anything special, same goes with SQL 2012 cloud hooks which I feel are both targeted towards the perception of cloud computing that you have.
I'm also not sure where the summary came from, with modern cloud computing there will be a push for running the same apps everywhere and not needing a different tool for each platform. Microsoft's OneNote is a prime example of this. Desktop computing isn't going anywhere, but what you can do at your desktop is about to explode in a big way. The ability to share massive resources should improve everyone's performance. Working remotely or in the data center? Performance won't be hurt either way.
I'll agree that management usually sees cloud services as a pipe dream. Everytime I'm asked to evaluate our services for cloud computing I remind the CxOs that we already do cloud computing privately. With XenServer being free it's awfully hard for the likes of Amazon to compete unless you really need to scale and even then, the cost savings are temporary.
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That's pretty disingenuous given that my Palm Treo had touch and no stylus in 2004. It was Windows Mobile 6.0, then upgraded to 6.5. Apple's advantage is that they had no legacy products or expectations to maintain so they could start over with a clean interface. When other manufacturers saw how clean it was they realized they had to put away their legacy products and move forward and we're all the better for it.
Additionaly, my Palm Treo had rounded corners! I used the screen lock so it didn't make calls. When in call it would go to the dial screen so you woudn't navigate the phone unlike earlier versions when you could find half typed contacts with your ear doing all the work. The built in SIP client was cool as hell too! The proximity sensor was just another method of dealing the same in-call or in-pocket problems which was a nice evolutionary step but hardly ground breaking or non-obvious.
I give Apple a lot of credit for shaking up the landscape and producing a polished product but this lawsuit seems ridiculous. When you're dealing with the shape of a calculator, its hard to think the form factor should be patent worthy.
Out of curioisity, do you understand what the actual purpose of the federal government is? It sure looks like you don't or you woudn't be advocating that states overrule the federal government.
So many people have this backwards that it truly scares me. It is the job of the federal government to secure borders, not the job of local municipalaties which could start armed conflicts with another country. It is not up to individual states to determine foreign policy, otherwise Texas could declare war on China and the whole U.S. would have to deal with the consequences.
I get that states should have the right to govern with minimal interference but when it comes to immigration it's no longer a single state making a decision. There is no federal law stating that you can't have marijuana dispensaries so it's up to Colorado or California to determine if that is what they want. Hell, here in Arizona we are starting to get dispensaries of our own!
Long story short, Arizona is out of step with the majority, because the majority knows that a state's rights end where another states begins. Arizona militarizing the border makes for a problems that Texas, New Mexico, and California may not be prepared to handle, this makes it a federal issue.
Wow, that's completely false! There are plenty of DVD players out there that play DiVX and some that play a few other codecs with MPEG4 containers.
How do you come to this conclusion? Jmorris positted that wealth would be transferred to 3rd world countries, leaving the U.S. an impoverished socialist hell hole. That is pretty hard to reconcile, like environmental consciousness is something that only socialists would support which is patently absurd.
Where is the proposal for one world government? Where is the proposal for a police state coming from greenies?
Perhaps most importantly, how is an efficient use of resources a bad thing?
It's pointless to attack the facts, the debate should move on to what we can realistically do about it. Society doesn't have to be dismantled, but the South Carolina approach of ignoring scientific measurement because it's inconvenient isn't going to help anybody. The oceans will rise and pretending they won't is just assinine. We should be prepared for the things to come instead of ignoring what is in front of our faces.
And of course, those professions you reference make more in return for the further education required. That's why I said the parent had it almost right. But of course the discussion is different when we're talking about good teachers versus bad teachers. Good teachers are doing a lot during the summer and use their own money to augment school supplies. Most people are so blinded by the bad teachers that they royally screw over the good teachers who genuinely want to provide a good education to their students. I've seen so many teachers get beat down trying to do the right thing that its no wonder there is no shortage of bad teachers. There is no reward for being a good one! Either way you get demonized.
My position is obviously biased though, much of my family are teachers. They work a lot of hours outside the class room.
That's largely fair given the current environment, Ben an Jerry's and indeed, money companies based out of Vermont have also seen corporations as for the good of the people. Ben and Jerry's was the shining beacon of corporate responsibility, routinely giving back to the communities which made it strong. It's investors didn't have a problem with this because the positive perception of the company helped open a lot of doors.
The same goes for the company I work for today, routinely we are the most charitable company in the state in proportion to our income. Corporate responsibility doesn't have to destroy the bottom line. Good will means that some companies clamor to work with us, it's very good for our bottom line.
The rules should be modified however as you are definitely correct, there is very little direct financial incentive for companies to behave responsibly. Most people that run particularly large organizations don't see or understand soft dollars despite how their Six Sigma certifications should teach them to think.
What is this based on? As someone that has many many familiy members who went on to become teachers, none of them have more money than they can shake a stick at, many also have their masters degree. My mother was a teacher for 30 years, 25 of them with a masters degree. Within 3 years of being an IT professional I was making more than she was by a long shot. I don't know any teachers driving Mercedes unless they are at the university level.
There are some seriously screwed up districts out their but they are not the only possible outcome. Teachers are also not allowed to become intellectually lazy as you say given that they need to either take additional classes or do 180 hours of professional development to get recertified to teach. This is an ongoing process.
It's not hard to Google something. Of course parent had is almost right, to renew your teaching certification you do have to have 12 college hours or 180 hours of professional development activities. The certificate is good for 6 years in Arizona although this varies from state to state.
Many teachers will also tutor in the summer months, this is also why a lot of teachers starting out are also in the service industry. I don't understand all the hate towards teachers. They aren't paid a lot for all the bullshit they have to deal with. I have to deal with a lot of bullshit too but I'm paid in relation to how much I have to deal with.
Everytime I see that it makes me cringe. Corporations are collections of people, people can be immoral and so can corporations. Do you believe widespread genecide to be immoral or amoral just because it's a collection of people doing it instead of an individual? The action is immoral, not the actor. An actor is believe to be immoral when the sum of his or her actions are immoral. It works the same whether it's some guy named Victor or Apple. Of course Apple is far from the only immoral actor in this business.
While I agree that there is a more civil way to disagree you are wrong. If iPhone is connected to an HDCP compliant device then you are in the same boat regardless of the connector you use. I'm not sure what content on the iPhone is locked using HDCP but most content I would put on such a device is not locked and thus can be split. HDMI 1.4 does not say you cannot down convert in it's spec, that is left up to content usage of HDCP to determine.
Honestly I see little reason for the proprietary connector other than ensuring that the Apple ecosystem remains the Apple ecosystem which has proved in the past to be a lucrative market so it's no suprise to see Apple bucking the trend of every other phone manufacturer out there.
I like your optimism that the American dream is still alive but you're also delusional if you don't think the lower income people are under full assault right now. Rather than set taxes to pre-Bush era the fight is simply to cut programs that were created and solvent prior to the Bush tax cuts which Obama extended. Given the amont of rhetoric coming from the Republican party which has a significant amount of influence over what is going on these days, I find it hard to just scoff at the idea that lower income people aren't being taken advantage of. When tax disparity is as high as it is these days it's really hard to draw another conclusion.
Also, as someone who started his own business more than a decade ago and I pretty easily state that it is significantly harder to start up and become successful these days. Unless you start with money it is becoming an NBA allstar odds type of game. Sure, it still happens but it's few and far between, like people that drop out of college and become billionaires.
Most of the time big money comes from other big money. Look at yesterdays story about the people behind Dragon Dictate. They got swollowed up by large coprorations that simply raped them. They aren't alone in this practice.
The post-WW2 era was about major prosperity and growth. Since the late 90s it has been about globalizing infrastructure and socializing losses. When you or I make a bad investment we lose our investment, when Sheldon Ayers does, he changes the laws and fixes the reason he didn't make money and then not only loses nothing but gains billions.
Wake up! Rich people aren't evil, they are just given too much power and do what anybody with too much power does.
Why would it be incompatible? Both products synchronize with a local file store,nothing says you couldn't run both services with the same file store.
Yes, a lot of people discover the hard way what happens when you put metal in a microwave.
Except that Windows 95 had several releases. The first of which you are correct, there was only USB support, in 95b and by 95c there was full USB support which was of course carried over to Windows 98. The first iMac was released in 1998.
I don't know anyone on the PC side that thought of USB as as useless. Everyone liked the idea of a universal port but lamented the lack of adoption. Thunderbolt in is the same boat currently. It won't replace the simplicity of USB but it's great as a docking station port and the ability to hook up an external video card for my laptop. Anything that needs truly high speed connectivity will work great with Thunderbolt connecting directly to the bus while USB in is protected land.
You are correct that the basic point was to teach about recessive and dominant genes but you witness mutation so it becomes part of the discussion. I don't understand why it became controversial, in my class there was a brief discussion before diving into the science about creation and non-science answeres. My teacher said some people choose to believe that, but we're going to show you the process and you can decide for yourself which is the better argument.
I went to a public high school in Vermont in the late 90s and science was as you described. Evolution wasn't a question because we worked with fruit flies and selectively paired them to achieve a desired outcome. This taught you what evolution was and that it was real. It isn't hard to think that if I could make it happen in a few weeks in school that nature surely could accomplish a lot given a few billion.
I agree though, science is a process and you should teach the process. That's what was done for me though so I'm not sure if my experience was very similar to what appears to be the majority of other schools out there. My graduating class was maybe 200 students so it wasn't exactly a big school, you actually knew your teachers though. My chemistry teacher in high school was crazy, but his passion for the subject lead to some fascinating experiments which almost always proved the math done beforehand. That's what I always liked about that class, teach the abstract, then show the real life association with the abstract math.
Some people still didn't care about science but I feel like everyone got at least a decent education and could tell you the basics even years later.
That is one of the most sane explanations I've heard in a long time. Unions are a great idea and vital to the interests of even non-union employees. It's crazy to me the lack of regard for history that led to the formation of unions to begin with. Seems these days some unions have gone too far while others do as you say and protect people that aren't up to standards. The thing is, in every case where it seems the company can't afford to sustain their union staff the unions seem to see reason and accept pay cuts as was the case in Wisconsin.
You're right though, the issue is very complicated.
Of course you also can't prove a negative. There is plenty of science that isn't based on observation directly. Theoretical physics for one, along with most of the quantum theory and string theory. They are still attempint to prove a positive though and using observation to affirm or disprove their hypothesis.
I wouldn't put a blanket statement that all religious people don't understand science though. I know plenty of doctors and research scientists that believe in a higher power but also believe we evolved over millions of years or are agnostic towards god having any involved which this poll doesn't seem to cover.
Given that it's a staff of one I beg to differ. Also note, Chrome OS still uses the same tools, it just uses cloud storage. Windows 8 will be the same way if you choose to run it that way with Skydrive. I've never seen a thin client setup that didn't take you to a familiar interface. SaaS can be a number of things, Office 365 is one example, and then there is the Adobe model, with the Adobe model you are running the same software on a machine with proper specs to handle the task at hand.
Every thin client I've encountered from back in the day to present day gave you a native interface. Even thin clients back to an AS/400 with text based forms provide you the same interface whether you use a laptop with full software stack or a thin client. A virtual desktop is just the logical extension of this.
So in short, I'm not sure what you think a thin client is. From banks to insurance companies to my own infrastructure it doesn't line up.
If you're talking about strictly web-based SaaS then Office 365 can still be an attack vector for malware. I don't see corporate computers going 100% web due to restrictions when you're traveling. By the time SaaS catches up to allow offline use you circle back to beefier machines and the cycle continues.
For me, the vast majority of users get a cheap $300ish thin client, the traveling users get a real laptop with SSL VPN and connect using a Citrix receiver. It works fast over the Internet, if they are completely offline then they can operate their virtual desktop locally, it will sync back to the server when it gets back to the Internet. This isn't hard, is exceedingly easy to back up, and is much more efficient due to being able to hop over to a spare thin client if your laptop dies.
I'm not sure where you are getting your information from but every thin client being deployed today is usually either RDP, VNC, VMWare VDI, or Citrix. RDP and VNC are giving way to virtual desktop streaming due to it being a whole lot more flexible. The whole reason desktops came back into fashioned was because of the over dependence on a terminal server. If you are out in the field then you need a complex setup VPN setup to secure everything if such a thing is even allowed. With VDI in place you have a much simpler web portal with a myriad of encryption and authentication options.
The "point" of the "cloud" is to abstract the work from the hardware that it is running on. If you experience hardware failure you should be able to connect from another machine and pick up where you left off. The same goes with a hardware failure at the server level. There is nothing new about cloud computing. It's a stack of tools designed to smooth out deployment.
When I connect to the cloud, guess what I'm doing? I'm using RDP into Amazon to control a virtual Windows server. When I'm using SQL Azure I'm connecting to a SQL server the same as I would anyway. The only difference is that the SQL server is load balanced and distributed across multiple servers. Of course then we're getting into cloud services for back office infrastructure which is a bit off topic.
Let's be clear, IT Desktop support will change but certainly won't go away because ultimately people want and need access to their web browser, they'll want fast access to their files, they'll want clustered computing resources for 3d rendering, all of this can only be done in a VDI environment, RDP and VNC are insufficient for those tasks.
Our thin clients have USB webcams hooked to them which passes through to their virtual desktop. When they take a picture the image is saved inside the virtual desktop to servers that are in a data center in the same building even when the webcam is 3000 miles away. It's the same speed whether they are at HQ or in Fiji. That is the point of the cloud.
What thin clients did you go with that were Win7 based? Hell, all of ours are ARM based linux boxen connecting to Citrix XenDesktop where they have their familiar Windows environment.
How so? Just because the server is running a linux hypervisor doesn't mean the resulting Windows virtual desktop is any different to manage. You still need centralized patch management and scripting. Backing up the user world becomes a whole lot simpler though as you don't need any fancy folder redirection or roaming profiles. This makes it look more flexible to the end user and makes it easier for SysAdmins.
I feel dirty making a case for cloud technologies. Of course in my case, the cloud is local, in my datacenter and under my control. If I need more horsepower temporarily and it's not sensitive in nature I can scale out to Amazon or the likes. Odds are it's easier for me just to add another node to the cluster though. Cheaper too in my experience. Of course I don't throw away a lot money on consultants when I can just set it all up myself.
While I agree with your premise as accurate, I don't agree with the conclusion. There will always be a need for the "how do I do this?" support that desktop support often fields. Around here at least, the majority of support is not fixing things but helping people figure out how to do something. A cloud won't change any of that.
Given that you can take your virtual desktop offline and on the road with you I'm not so sure it'll swing back. From a corporate perspective it's a no brainer. When you abstract the work from the hardware a lot of options that never existed before gain traction. My favorite example is fully 3d capable Autocad running on an iPad. I hate the iPad but it's pretty cool to take the tablet to the meeting, mark-up your changes, then connect to your virtual desktop from your workstation and continue where you left off.
The owner of the company routinely goes from his phone, to tablet, to Mac, to Windows at his desk, and never thinks twice. He's always got his desktop with fast local access to network resources. It's a combination that's hard to beat.
You might have a point if you assume that everyone is using the same cloud and not their own private clouds. As someone deploying Virtual Desktops far and wide I can safely say that cloud services make a huge difference on end-point costs as well as reducing downtime associated with pouring coffee on a laptop.
I like the idea that hardware failure isn't going to stop me in my tracks. Windows 8 cloud integration doesn't strike me as anything special, same goes with SQL 2012 cloud hooks which I feel are both targeted towards the perception of cloud computing that you have.
I'm also not sure where the summary came from, with modern cloud computing there will be a push for running the same apps everywhere and not needing a different tool for each platform. Microsoft's OneNote is a prime example of this. Desktop computing isn't going anywhere, but what you can do at your desktop is about to explode in a big way. The ability to share massive resources should improve everyone's performance. Working remotely or in the data center? Performance won't be hurt either way.
I'll agree that management usually sees cloud services as a pipe dream. Everytime I'm asked to evaluate our services for cloud computing I remind the CxOs that we already do cloud computing privately. With XenServer being free it's awfully hard for the likes of Amazon to compete unless you really need to scale and even then, the cost savings are temporary.