If you are a multitasker Aero rocks man, try Aero flip or the way you can "slam" one window to one side and instantly make it take up half the screen, perfect for comparing folder or file operations. The resources are frankly tiny on even wimpy hardware, I tried both Aero on and off on my E350 netbook and found it made a whole 12 minutes difference on the battery...big whoop. The only complaint I had was it was obvious MSFT never thought much about the Windows basic UI as there was no themes ever released or any real way to change from the basic grey/silver look which on some of my customers little Atom netbooks it would have been nice to easily pick other colors, maybe a nice black or the nice emerald green like they had on XP.
That said I have to agree with the reviewer who called Windows 8 Windows Frankenstein as you just have to go back and forth too damned much. i should be able to pick metro and stay in metro or pick desktop and stay in desktop, the switching is just jarring and irritating.
It sure is...if your screen is 1366x768 or less, and if its touch enabled. Everywhere else? Its sucks big hairy balls. I could list all the royal PITA moments I had with that OS but why bother when this article appropriately entitled Windows 8, yes its THAT bad sums it up better than I ever could. the only thing I'd add is that their "desktop mode" is frankly a crippled ribbon happy joke compared to the feature rich desktop of Windows 7.
So while I'll buy a couple of copies, simply because at $40 a piece for Win 8 Pro they are giving it away and I hope either Start8 or Classic Shell will give me an ersatz Win 7 Pro for $40 I can say if they offered both Win 7 and Win 8 at the same price? I doubt seriously they'd get enough takers of Win 8 to even bother. Yes its THAT bad.
Have you actually WORKED in a server room? I can tell you conservative is not the word to describe those guys, because any buggy crap that screws something up and actually causes downtime COSTS MONEY so needless to say they are VERY cautious! Now sure RH and Cent may not be the most cutting edge but cutting edge software and servers don't go together anyway, what they are looking for is 5 9s uptime and that is something RH is damned good at. And why would they need the latest features? They are serving files, running DBs, serving up webpages, don't need cutting edge for that as its been going on for 20+ years.
And yes we WILL see, and I have actual evidence to back up my claim. look at what Canonical has done since Shuttleworth announced 2+ years ago he wouldn't sink anymore of his own money in...you had the netbook remix trying to catch the tail end of the netbook craze, you had them attempt UbuntuTV and Ubuntu Phone, you've seen Ubuntu Server and Ubuntu One come out,you've had Unity and attempts at getting out an Ubuntu tablet...why? Why would a company that had spent the last 4 years billing itself as "THE Linux desktop for humans" suddenly go so all over the map?
The answer is simple, the millions they got from Shuttleworth is going out in the form of payroll and lights and paperclips and the money coming in? Practically non-existent. So they have been throwing crap at a wall hoping something ANYTHING will stick and give them positive cash flow, this Amazon deal is just the latest in a long list of attempts. But it too shall fail, we see the forums filled with "apt get remove" posts so when you figure how many remove it and how many don't buy the amount they'll get from referrals probably won't pay their light bill, just as their previous attempt with Amazon, selling MP3s, has died. Notice they didn't bring that up anywhere in this announcement, why? because it failed and you don't bring up failures in press releases.
Its a shame, as the idea was a nice one, they simply chose the wrong OS to base it on, there is simply no money in Linux desktops.
Uhhh...didn't bother to actually READ the GP or check his links before posting did you? Sadly the fact that 2 people marked you insightful means they didn't read the GP either, they really do need to redesign the layout of this site so that GPs are easier to see but until then I'll fill you in on what you missed.
The GP asked why the media is completely ignoring the fact that Christians in Pakistan are being raped and murdered daily simply for being Christian and the answer to that is...white guilt from the elites in the media. It is no different than how if a white man hits a black man its a "hate crime" yet if 30 blacks go walking down the street robbing and beating its a "flash mob".
You see with white guilt and the path of appeasement you get "protected classes" which as far as they are concerned can do no wrong. Again post the GP's links to HuffPo and I'm sure you'll find several who not only bring up the crusades but who blame 9/11 on the USA. If "we'd only do what they want" they say, "then they'd leave us alone!" except, and not to Godwin, simply pointing out the last time this EXACT train of logic was used...it didn't work and that was of course with Germany in the 30s.
If someone doesn't respect you, respect your right to speak or even exist? Then appeasement will NOT make them respect you, they will simply see you as prey. We have seen this over and over throughout history, if you follow the path of appeasement with those that don't respect you then they simply push harder, demand more appeasement, and when you finally reach the point you won't appease them anymore they WILL attack you.
Look at what appeasement has already cost the EU and UK, there are places in both where a woman can't walk uncovered or a man drink a beer without being attacked, why? Are they not being appeased? no its because nothing but TOTAL victory is acceptable to them and they know nobody will stop them, they'll get a slap on the wrist by cowardly politicians that don't want to be labeled "racially insensitive". Well I have news for you, respecting individual rights is NOT racially insensitive, its the fricking core of democracy!
But we will get that lesson shown to use very soon, at current birth rates and immigration policies a good chunk of the EU will end up majority Muslim and then you'll see how much respect they have for you. the ALREADY have "Sharia ghettos" in most major cities in the EU, where they live just as barbarically as they do in the ME, those will simply spread, because appeasement NEVER works.
Which makes perfect sense, why fill rooms with heat generating boxes when these new monster AMD and Intel units can run dozens of server VMs on a single system? Now that they have finished this contract I'm sure they'll come up with a new one that takes the switch to VMs into account and next year they won't have to waste the power, problem solved.
Uhhh..they had backups which means that makes NO sense whatsoever. If they simply wanted to wipe data they could have zero'd the drives and then restored from a backup minus the data, but just slapping Linux on there when they had backups makes zero sense.
Thank you. If someone told you to flush this hundred dollar bill or get a $2000 fine, who wouldn't flush the money? they signed the agreement, for whatever reason they didn't need the power, and now the time is due they either have to make it the usage to fall into the agreement or pay a hell of a fine for failing to live up to their part of the bargain.
The sad part is if this would have been say Dillard's, or The Men's Warehouse? Nobody would have gave a rat's ass, but because its MSFT the writers can use it for clickbait because they know the zealots that foam when they see the name Microsoft can use it for their two minutes of hate.
Frankly I don't give a shit about any corp either way, if their tools do the job fine, if not I go somewhere else. but to get your panties in a wad because gasp! shock! a company had to fulfill an agreement? There is hatred and there is batshit zealoty and I'd say the clickbait falls into the latter.
I don't think they hate Christians so much as they hate pretty much anything to do with white people, and if they are white they probably hate themselves. Its classic liberal white guilt, where you appease any group you can claim were "wronged", no matter how far back you go, try going to HuffPo and show those links and see how quickly they bring up the crusades. Yeah that was what? 600 years ago?
I'm not right or left, I actually lean towards socialist, but the path of appeasement is a path of death and failure. Nobody has EVER gotten anywhere with appeasement, its a failed policy and no matter whether you dress it up with terms like white guilt or political correctness or tolerance its still the same thing, classic appeasement policy.
But instead of appeasement we MUST stand up for the truth and place that book where it belongs, right next to Mao's little red book and Mein Kampf on the "truly vile and evil" list, PERIOD. No more appeasement, no more threatening Americans that use their first amendment rights because it pisses off the Muslims, we should treat it as the cult it is and the book as the evil that it most certainly is, NO APPEASEMENT EVER!
Well then nobody should bitch when ANY company, be it MSFT or fricking Toys R' Us, blows through power just to keep from getting fined. If the cost of blowing through the power is less than the fine, which thanks to the agreement it most certainly is? Then they would be dumb NOT to blow through the power, and would get called to the carpet for blowing shareholder's money by taking fines over meeting their end of the agreement.
But I'm sure just as the article's flamebait headline suggests its just another excuse for clickbait. if people have a problem with this? then they should outlaw those agreements.
Well lets see..we had politician from the POTUS on down talk about how "deplorable" the video was even though ironically it was based on the events in the Koran, then we have the state trying to see if they can revoke his parole because he used a PC to upload the video, oh and they DID broadcast his name and whereabouts all over the media, so that now he and his family is in hiding. Yeah...not seeing anybody in the USA government saying a damned thing about free speech anywhere.
Of course this is the problem with the lie that is political correctness, one has to bend the law, even warp reality, to follow the path of appeasement. Notice how the try to blame everything on a cheesy video that came out months ago, when all the rioting started on 9/11? Notice how they have a royal fit at someone pointing out what is written in their own book but do NOT have a problem with blatant anti-Jewish and Christian propaganda on their own networks, going so far as to make children's videos about how great jihad is?
This is the problem with political correctness and appeasement, it makes "special classes" that one can't say anything about, even when its the truth, and must bend over backwards for even when they show no courtesy or compassion for any view but their own. I'll end this with some quotes from their very own book, although I wouldn't be surprised if I was modded down and told what a racist I was for using their own words..
Quran 4:89: They (infidels) desire that you should disbelieve as they have disbelieved, so that you might be (all) alike; therefore take not from among them friends until they fly (their homes) in Allah's way; but if they turn back, then seize them and kill them wherever you find them, and take not from among them a friend or a helper.
Quran 8:12: Instill terror into the hearts of the unbelievers;
Quran 2:191: kill the disbelievers wherever we find them
Quran 22:19-22: for them (the unbelievers) garments of fire shall be cut and there shall be poured over their heads boiling water whereby whatever is in their bowels and skin shall be dissolved and they will be punished with hooked iron rods.
Quran 8:12: Your Lord inspired the angels with the message: I will terrorize the unbelievers. Therefore smite them on their necks and every joint and incapacitate them. Strike off their heads and cut off each of their fingers and toes.
Quran 8:7: Allah wished to confirm the truth by His words: Wipe the infidels out to the last.
Quran 8:59: The infidels should not think that they can get away from us. Prepare against them whatever arms and weaponry you can muster so that you may terrorize them. They are your enemy and Allah's enemy.
A fellow Ranger owner! Great little trucks aren't they? Nothing fancy, just solid likable little trucks. I recently had to replace the ball joints in mine, first major expense I ever had on the truck since I like you bought outright. Since my truck insurance is on dad's fleet insurance I'm paying about $350 a year, and like you the upkeep? Maybe $300.
So I agree, its just not practical to spend that crazy amount of money on payments, insurance,upkeep, etc just to save a little money on gas. I once sat down and figured up what it would cost me to break even on a hybrid like a Prius and with gas at $4 a gallon if I drove 200 miles a week (which is MUCH higher than I actually drive, most days maybe 20 miles since i live in the middle of town) it would take me over 10 years to just break even and of course the batteries would be out of warranty and the cost to replace? Would blow away any savings from switching.
So until they come up with something like a "People's car" where I can get a diesel that gets 45MPG for under $15k I'll just drive the Ranger until the wheels fall off, just as I wouldn't be surprised to see my oldest graduate medical school and still be driving that little midnight blue S10 of his.
But people that have never had a paid off vehicle just have no idea how much cheaper it is, until I passed 35 when I was paying on a truck the insurance would often cost me as much as the payments, just insane how much they gouge compared to having one paid for. The oldest is 19 and his insurance is only $120 every 3 months which for a male with a sports truck really isn't bad.
But none of those are bringing in enough revenue to keep the lights on which is why canonical is trying this, because desktops just don't sell support contracts (hear of anybody buying a support contract for Windows?) and their server offering is practically dead, everyone uses RH or Cent, and I bet my last dollar they aren't getting a dime for those Dell installs since Dell has to pay an entire dev team to run their own repo and backport everything (because if they use stock Ubuntu the drivers break) so there just isn't any money there, not enough to pay for the R&D and support and bug fixing and regression testing and advertising and all the other things required to compete with the other guys.
The reason RH can make money is twofold, one servers have guys with good educations making six figures to maintain them called admins, so the "update foo broke my printer" kinds of support you see on desktop simply aren't there, not to mention most servers run headless with no sound or other user level crap so its less area to break, and two if a corp finds a serious bug that their admins can't work around? they'll pay RH to fix it.
None of that exists in the desktop market, your users don't even know what they HAVE, much less how to configure it so drivers must NOT break on update, CLI has to go since the users simply won't be able to make heads or tales of it, and the most bug prone elements, such as Pulse, WiFi manager, and X Server, would probably need replacing or forking. Remember users are used to Windows where a PC from 2003 with XP still runs to this very day with ALL drivers functional, so that is the level of simple you'll have to shoot for.
The problem is a good 95%+ of the money spent on improving Linux is NOT in the DEs or userland, its ALL in the server tech as that is what the corps are paying to fix. So Canonical or whomever will have to come up with probably a good 100 million to do all the fixing, regressions testing, yadda yadda yadda,...where will they get the money? How will they recoup their investment, and make enough to continue?
As another user I was speaking to about this said "For a Linux desktop to flourish you'd HAVE to get rid of the redistribution clause" because as he rightly pointed out this isn't something one has to worry about in hardware, you don't have access to factories in China so you can't compete but with software? ZERO barrier to entry, hell any free file hosting would be all that it would take and since you're allowed to just take everything and hand out infinite copies you can't make any money on software ONLY on support or ads or tin cups.
That is why I said the smart move would have been to take a page out of Job's playbook and went BSD for the base. Then they could have made changes to the guts and shared those (as Apple does with CUPS) and kept their userland proprietary. That way they could actually sell copies and not have to worry about competing with their own work. Because the models that traditionally work on Linux simply don't work on the desktop, this is why no company has been able to make a go of it and I predict Canonical will be gone in two years or less, just not enough income coming in.
Now as the other guy said not a security expert or crypto guy so maybe I'm missing something, but with the ability to rent time on these huge monsters like the Amazon cloud and those big Nvidia Tesla boxes won't generating those inputs become a lot more doable?
Maybe somebody here can explain what is meant by "longer than the length of the universe" and more specifically what kind of FLOPS they were looking at when they wrote that? After all just 20 years ago we were using computers below 100MHz and this 6 core AMD I built for cheap would have been a million dollar supercomputer. If we continue to keep cranking like this, won't the ability to distribute the load across so many massive number crunchers for relatively cheap make breaking these a whole lot more doable?
Again if I'm missing something my bad, the deep level math that they use in heavy crypto is honestly beyond me, but I do know cranking through math is what CPUs do best and if Amazon cloud is any indication soon you'll be able to rent something the size and power of Blue Gene for less than a really nice gaming PC which could put it into black hat useful territory.
My big question is....why? Why would you want this? Its not like we don't already have fake leather, and its not like people are gonna give up their burgers and meat lovers pizzas...hmmm..pizza.. so what for? The only upside i can think of is you can alter the color to make colors not of nature, but that's all we need, electric green and neon pink day glo leather outfits.../shudders/.
Congrats sir, you nailed it in one. if you think about it your solution would even solve RMS' classic "printer story" which started the GPL since he'd HAVE the source he needed to fix the problem, he just wouldn't have been able to put out his own version of the software.
The problem is, and after speaking with other who pointed out I was wrong when I called him a communist, is that I truly believe that RMS HATES programmers. I mean when they took him up on his own words when he said that they should give away all their work and make money on documentation? he started complaining and demanding that "documentation should be free!". yet he and the FSF seem to have NO problem taking money from those that gain from that labor such as Intel, nor do you ever see RMS railing on how CEOs or doctors or plumbers should work for nothing ONLY programmers.
In the end I think you'll agree that with unlimited redistribution and no clauses to stop anyone from just offering all your work for nothing there is only 3 ways to make money with Linux, 1.-The support model, which if you think about gives you an incentive to make things a little more PITA than they ought to be because if its truly great why would I need you to support it?, 2.-By selling hardware, such as routers and tablets and what have you, because the software in that case really isn't the product, and 3.-The tin cup model.
But to take a shot at the desktop none of these strategies work, nobody will buy support, you're not gonna be able to compete with the OEMs on hardware when they sell Win 7 Basic netbooks at $199 thanks to insane economies of scale, and the tin cup model won't bring in enough money nor give you any way to plan for a future, as what coder is gonna want to take a job where he knows they might be laid off next quarter because not enough change was thrown in the hat?
To me the really fricking sad part is an OSS desktop was a GREAT idea, a desktop where the OEMs and ODMs couldn't abandon your hardware by refusing to give you drivers for the later versions, but as you said when anybody can redistribute and compete against you without having to give you a cent of the R&D costs how can you possibly stay afloat? Its like a USA manufacturer trying to compete with Chinese slave labor while their factory just dumps toxins out the back door into the ditch. You just can't do it, GPL as is just doesn't work.
Its also a damned shame we won't see Shuttleworth take your advice and make an Ubuntu based on PC-BSD with Debian, then they could actually sell some copies and I'd be right there ready to buy mine, as we little guys have NO love for the way MSFT gouges system builders. Sadly without the money to fork my own distro the constant driver breakage and problems like Pulse screwage makes my after support costs shoot through the roof.
Funny that so many here call me a "dirty evil M$ shill ZOMFG!" when I was one of the first ones on Ubuntu, and had tried every flavor under the sun just trying to find a way NOT to give a quarter of my build price to MSFT. But instead we just get excuses, "works for me!" and name calling. Damned shame because the idea was great, the execution just sucked.
Well the way you could get around the UI problem is a universally installed app along the lines of "Windows Remote Assistance" which was the BIG deal that I pushed my customers hard to switch for. Whomever at MSFT invented that should have gotten a raise and a company car, doesn't matter if they have a dynamic address or NAT, they just give me the code and i can remote in from across town or even in another state. Its a real Godsend when you can actually see what they are seeing and control the whole thing, just wonderful for administration.
And with phones you have ZERO hardware changes for the life of the device, none at all. You'd think Torvalds and the devs futzing wouldn't break the most bog standard stuff but what finally made me give up on Linux in my shop was how many times I'd have fricking plain hardware, your Realtek and Sigmatel onboard that has been around for half a decade, ancient IGPs like Radeon 2x and Intel 8xx chips just crap all over themselves because some dev decided to fiddle with a pointer and crap all over the drivers.
but I agree we need to lay the blame where it belongs, Torvalds and the system devs. Look up the ONLY complaints they had over something as standard as an ABI, which BSD, Solaris, Windows, OSX, even OS/2 has, and you'll see it boils down to "If I have an ABI I can't tweak stuff like I want" which is a classic childish hacker mentality and NOT the mentality of someone who is in charge of code millions depend on. The disconnect as you point out is truly insane, its a game of hot potato with everyone pointing at everyone else and nothing getting done. Its sad but this is why guys like me can't sell and support Linux, and why there will never be a "year of the Linux desktop" because it just costs too much to support.
The problem with that idea, which I agree on the surface makes plenty of sense, is that thanks to the lack of an ABI (which Linux users will scream they don't need, but not only does every. other. major. OS have one but the ONLY argument put forth by a dev was a religious one complete with "I hope all non free drivers break", nice attitude from a kernel dev) the software ends up tied to which kernel you are using, so you jump on the breakage rollercoaster or quickly ALL of the software ends up out of date.
I mean go to ANY major Linux software website and alongside the source and the.deb files you'll see a note about which kernel it uses. that is just a fucked up design and frankly a bad deal if you wanna compete as most Windows software from the late 90s/early 00s will still run, and just about all OSX X86 software will run on the latest release.
So I agree completely with your idea, the problem is until you got as influential as Shuttleworth with his "cadence" mantra you'd be forced to pay devs to backport and run your own custom repo, which ironically is EXACTLY what Dell does to keep Ubuntu from breaking their drivers.
Uhhh..didn't bother to actually READ the link, did you? Because if you did you'd see the original owners of youTube laugh and talk about how they needed to drive users and then sell out before the lawsuits, you'd have read the head of Google video say "We can't compete because all of YouTube's stuff is pirated" and you'd read how the head of Google video had made a system so that the corps could find and remove their stuff easily but youTube put in the ability to have "private" videos that got around the filters.
So why not try reading the actual link, there is literally dozens of pages of emails and chat logs listing quite clearly what was going on and still is, also links to the various ongoing lawsuits Google has against it for snatching other people's stuff.
Uhhh..you DO know that Mint is a knock off and NOT a part of Canonical, yes? The same goes for Kubuntu and Xubuntu as they fired the devs that were making those a couple of years back so now its just some volunteers taking the Ubuntu source and building the DE they like for it.
And THAT is the problem in a nutshell, Canonical can pay $10 million to develop all these features like Launchpad and Wayland and fixing the problems but how will they make their money back, much less make enough to grow so they can do more?
They can't which is why they'll fail and no more advances like we saw from Caonical will be forthcoming. this is why Xandros and Linspire went bust, why RH and Suse only sell corporate, there is just no way to make money on the consumer and small business market with the tin cup or support contract models so companies that try...die.
Exactly and more importantly its nice to see that we aren't getting a billion "that's racist!" for daring to say that man as we know it didn't just come from Africa.
Science doesn't have a damned thing to do with race, it has to do with evidence, and as we find more and more fossils I'd say its pretty obvious that there were probably a dozen, maybe more "offshoots" and those ended up either breeding into the other groups or dying out.
So while there indeed may have been a primitive ancestor in Africa all the mixing with various offshoots like Neanderthal and Peking man is how we ended up the people that we are today.
MSE is good IF, and its a BIG IF, you are not going anywhere risky, as it doesn't seem to do as well on drive bys as the others. This isn't really surprising as it started out as Giant AntiSpy before being bought by MSFT, but if he is going anywhere other than school sites I'd be leery if he isn't tech savvy.
A better choice IMHO and one I've been giving to my customers for a couple of years now is Comodo Antivirus as its butt simple, pretty much install and forget, is free, and is VERY good at stopping malware cold. If you want extra protection it asks on install if you wish to use their secure DNS which blacklists malware sites, but its strictly optional. its light on resources, doesn't pop up 40 ads a week trying to sell you crap like Avast has been doing lately, and has a really nice sandboxing feature that is enabled by default but which you can set to be as granular as you like, anything from off to whitelistsing to blacklisting, really nice.
All in all out of the free AVs I'd rate it "best of show" because not only does it have sane defaults and great sandboxing, but its as simple or as fine grained as you want it to be. With MSE there really isn't any way to change...well anything, with Comodo if you desire you can tweak pretty much everything if you choose, from the behavior of the scanning engine, to the levels of paranoia on the sandboxing (which MSE doesn't do) to who what and when it scans and where it will scan.
But the simple fact is, and I can't believe on a supposedly libertarian leaning site i even have to point this out, TINSTAAFL and sadly with the GPL there isn't really any ways to make money on the desktop other than ads or the tin cup model, which doesn't bring in enough steady revenue to keep the lights on, much less pay for all the devs required to even maintain much less update something the size of Ubuntu. Oh and before someone brings up servers we are talking desktops NOT servers, servers are a different animal and live and die by support contracts, which as RH becoming a billion dollar company proves you CAN make money off GPL software with the enterprise support model.
Does that mean in ANY way that the GPL is bad? of course not, it simply means that NO license can truly fit all possible use cases and desktops are simply one of the places the GPL model doesn't work. As I have pointed out it'll cost a good 100 million plus to bring a Linux desktop to where it can really stand toe to toe against Windows and OSX, all those "update broke my drivers" messes would have to disappear, which means major rebuilds or replacement for Pulse, the Wireless stack, and X Server as well, not to mention forking many of the internals so when Linus and the devs futz with something it won't break drivers. To truly compete you'll need to have at least 7 years of support (halfway between Apple's 5 and MSFT's 10) and the drivers that work at RTM will have to continue working right up to EOL.
But where will this money come from? You can't sell support contracts to consumers, they just won't buy them. You can try to sell hardware but that is a VERY risky game, you either have to get enough buzz you can make high margins like Apple or you'll get caught up in the race to the bottom, so where will it come from? The tin cup model simply won't allow a steady enough income to keep the lights on, much less plan for the future, and from the hatred we see across the web about Canonical's move its doubtful Amazon ads will even pay their light bill.
This is why I say what Shuttleworth should have done was base Ubuntu on one of the BSDs and NOT Linux, as the GPL model simply doesn't work on desktops. that way he would have a way to differentiate his version from the crowd, could charge some small amount (say $10 for Home, $20 for Business) and actually have been able to undercut MSFT while still making money per copy, and he wouldn't have to use cheap stunts like this just to get a working revenue stream.
The GPL and Linux works great on servers, works great when you are selling hardware like embedded, but there just isn't any money to be made with GPL and Linux on the desktop. I mean how many "based on Ubuntu" distros are there now? They can enjoy the millions of dollars worth of work Shuttleworth paid for without giving back a cent. To give an analogy...imagine you spent 10 million to make the perfect lightbulb and will have to sell it at $5 a copy to make a profit. Now imagine thanks to a license that you had to take to get the work started I can just take your design, have it made in China, and give it away to advertise my business without giving you a cent for R&D...how many do you think would buy YOUR lightbulb? How many do you think would be willing to invest their own millions to make it even better, knowing I can just copy and give it away without giving them a cent?
In the end coders have to eat, bills have to be paid, and if you truly want a "year of the Linux desktop" its gonna cost 100 million plus nobody seems to want to pay. At least with BSD, and again not saying one is better than the other, saying they are each useful for different use cases, they would be able to pay for the R&D required to really compete. Instead I predict within 2 years, probably less, Ubuntu will join Xandros and Linspire and all the other failed attempts to actually make a business around Linux desktops.
Its the size of the batteries friend. You seem to be thinking like its a lead acid battery, easy to make in a standard form factor and just "pop and drop" when IRL the batteries on something like a Leaf or a Volt can weigh as much as 700 pounds.
I don't care how you design the shape when you are lifting and lowering 700 pounds there is plenty that can go wrong, it gets dropped on the car, on somebody's foot, it gets lowered too quickly and breaks itself or something in the cradle, all of that will have to be insured and drive up the cost. Not to mention you are gonna have to have someone sitting around just to run the wench and to move that weight safely isn't gonna be a "pop and drop" kinda deal.
And even if you have a vehicle that isn't great on gas if most of your driving is shorter trips with only the occasional long drive it just wouldn't make economic sense to buy that second vehicle, especially when you figure in taxes, tags, and vehicle maintenance
My 99 Ranger frankly is a little piggie (V6 Vulcan, built like a tank but lousy on gas) but since i only drive to the capital (120 mile round trip) about once a month and the visit to take my GF to see her kinfolks is again once a month for 300 round trip and the rest of the time is under 30 miles it makes no economic sense to take on a car payment and the higher insurance premiums when the truck is already paid for and lets me haul loads for family and friends several times a year.
So I don't think the whole "two car" idea really works. Everyone I know with 2 cars have 2 drivers (such as my oldest boy in his S10 while I have my Ranger) so it isn't like the second car is only used occasionally and having a vehicle with such limited range just wouldn't be practical. I mean at first glance it would look like my oldest could trade his S10 for something like an electric, since 90% of his driving is the 10 miles round trip to the local college, but it is that 10%, like when he recently had to drive a friend to another state to attend her grandma's funeral, that would create a real hardship if he didn't have any way to go long distances.
The whole thing is a catch-22, you won't see these take off until the battery tech and charging stations are there, but the infrastructure won't be practical to build until there are enough of them to justify the expense.
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If you are a multitasker Aero rocks man, try Aero flip or the way you can "slam" one window to one side and instantly make it take up half the screen, perfect for comparing folder or file operations. The resources are frankly tiny on even wimpy hardware, I tried both Aero on and off on my E350 netbook and found it made a whole 12 minutes difference on the battery...big whoop. The only complaint I had was it was obvious MSFT never thought much about the Windows basic UI as there was no themes ever released or any real way to change from the basic grey/silver look which on some of my customers little Atom netbooks it would have been nice to easily pick other colors, maybe a nice black or the nice emerald green like they had on XP.
That said I have to agree with the reviewer who called Windows 8 Windows Frankenstein as you just have to go back and forth too damned much. i should be able to pick metro and stay in metro or pick desktop and stay in desktop, the switching is just jarring and irritating.
It sure is...if your screen is 1366x768 or less, and if its touch enabled. Everywhere else? Its sucks big hairy balls. I could list all the royal PITA moments I had with that OS but why bother when this article appropriately entitled Windows 8, yes its THAT bad sums it up better than I ever could. the only thing I'd add is that their "desktop mode" is frankly a crippled ribbon happy joke compared to the feature rich desktop of Windows 7.
So while I'll buy a couple of copies, simply because at $40 a piece for Win 8 Pro they are giving it away and I hope either Start8 or Classic Shell will give me an ersatz Win 7 Pro for $40 I can say if they offered both Win 7 and Win 8 at the same price? I doubt seriously they'd get enough takers of Win 8 to even bother. Yes its THAT bad.
Have you actually WORKED in a server room? I can tell you conservative is not the word to describe those guys, because any buggy crap that screws something up and actually causes downtime COSTS MONEY so needless to say they are VERY cautious! Now sure RH and Cent may not be the most cutting edge but cutting edge software and servers don't go together anyway, what they are looking for is 5 9s uptime and that is something RH is damned good at. And why would they need the latest features? They are serving files, running DBs, serving up webpages, don't need cutting edge for that as its been going on for 20+ years.
And yes we WILL see, and I have actual evidence to back up my claim. look at what Canonical has done since Shuttleworth announced 2+ years ago he wouldn't sink anymore of his own money in...you had the netbook remix trying to catch the tail end of the netbook craze, you had them attempt UbuntuTV and Ubuntu Phone, you've seen Ubuntu Server and Ubuntu One come out,you've had Unity and attempts at getting out an Ubuntu tablet...why? Why would a company that had spent the last 4 years billing itself as "THE Linux desktop for humans" suddenly go so all over the map?
The answer is simple, the millions they got from Shuttleworth is going out in the form of payroll and lights and paperclips and the money coming in? Practically non-existent. So they have been throwing crap at a wall hoping something ANYTHING will stick and give them positive cash flow, this Amazon deal is just the latest in a long list of attempts. But it too shall fail, we see the forums filled with "apt get remove" posts so when you figure how many remove it and how many don't buy the amount they'll get from referrals probably won't pay their light bill, just as their previous attempt with Amazon, selling MP3s, has died. Notice they didn't bring that up anywhere in this announcement, why? because it failed and you don't bring up failures in press releases.
Its a shame, as the idea was a nice one, they simply chose the wrong OS to base it on, there is simply no money in Linux desktops.
Uhhh...didn't bother to actually READ the GP or check his links before posting did you? Sadly the fact that 2 people marked you insightful means they didn't read the GP either, they really do need to redesign the layout of this site so that GPs are easier to see but until then I'll fill you in on what you missed.
The GP asked why the media is completely ignoring the fact that Christians in Pakistan are being raped and murdered daily simply for being Christian and the answer to that is...white guilt from the elites in the media. It is no different than how if a white man hits a black man its a "hate crime" yet if 30 blacks go walking down the street robbing and beating its a "flash mob".
You see with white guilt and the path of appeasement you get "protected classes" which as far as they are concerned can do no wrong. Again post the GP's links to HuffPo and I'm sure you'll find several who not only bring up the crusades but who blame 9/11 on the USA. If "we'd only do what they want" they say, "then they'd leave us alone!" except, and not to Godwin, simply pointing out the last time this EXACT train of logic was used...it didn't work and that was of course with Germany in the 30s.
If someone doesn't respect you, respect your right to speak or even exist? Then appeasement will NOT make them respect you, they will simply see you as prey. We have seen this over and over throughout history, if you follow the path of appeasement with those that don't respect you then they simply push harder, demand more appeasement, and when you finally reach the point you won't appease them anymore they WILL attack you.
Look at what appeasement has already cost the EU and UK, there are places in both where a woman can't walk uncovered or a man drink a beer without being attacked, why? Are they not being appeased? no its because nothing but TOTAL victory is acceptable to them and they know nobody will stop them, they'll get a slap on the wrist by cowardly politicians that don't want to be labeled "racially insensitive". Well I have news for you, respecting individual rights is NOT racially insensitive, its the fricking core of democracy!
But we will get that lesson shown to use very soon, at current birth rates and immigration policies a good chunk of the EU will end up majority Muslim and then you'll see how much respect they have for you. the ALREADY have "Sharia ghettos" in most major cities in the EU, where they live just as barbarically as they do in the ME, those will simply spread, because appeasement NEVER works.
Which makes perfect sense, why fill rooms with heat generating boxes when these new monster AMD and Intel units can run dozens of server VMs on a single system? Now that they have finished this contract I'm sure they'll come up with a new one that takes the switch to VMs into account and next year they won't have to waste the power, problem solved.
Uhhh..they had backups which means that makes NO sense whatsoever. If they simply wanted to wipe data they could have zero'd the drives and then restored from a backup minus the data, but just slapping Linux on there when they had backups makes zero sense.
Thank you. If someone told you to flush this hundred dollar bill or get a $2000 fine, who wouldn't flush the money? they signed the agreement, for whatever reason they didn't need the power, and now the time is due they either have to make it the usage to fall into the agreement or pay a hell of a fine for failing to live up to their part of the bargain.
The sad part is if this would have been say Dillard's, or The Men's Warehouse? Nobody would have gave a rat's ass, but because its MSFT the writers can use it for clickbait because they know the zealots that foam when they see the name Microsoft can use it for their two minutes of hate.
Frankly I don't give a shit about any corp either way, if their tools do the job fine, if not I go somewhere else. but to get your panties in a wad because gasp! shock! a company had to fulfill an agreement? There is hatred and there is batshit zealoty and I'd say the clickbait falls into the latter.
I don't think they hate Christians so much as they hate pretty much anything to do with white people, and if they are white they probably hate themselves. Its classic liberal white guilt, where you appease any group you can claim were "wronged", no matter how far back you go, try going to HuffPo and show those links and see how quickly they bring up the crusades. Yeah that was what? 600 years ago?
I'm not right or left, I actually lean towards socialist, but the path of appeasement is a path of death and failure. Nobody has EVER gotten anywhere with appeasement, its a failed policy and no matter whether you dress it up with terms like white guilt or political correctness or tolerance its still the same thing, classic appeasement policy.
But instead of appeasement we MUST stand up for the truth and place that book where it belongs, right next to Mao's little red book and Mein Kampf on the "truly vile and evil" list, PERIOD. No more appeasement, no more threatening Americans that use their first amendment rights because it pisses off the Muslims, we should treat it as the cult it is and the book as the evil that it most certainly is, NO APPEASEMENT EVER!
Well then nobody should bitch when ANY company, be it MSFT or fricking Toys R' Us, blows through power just to keep from getting fined. If the cost of blowing through the power is less than the fine, which thanks to the agreement it most certainly is? Then they would be dumb NOT to blow through the power, and would get called to the carpet for blowing shareholder's money by taking fines over meeting their end of the agreement.
But I'm sure just as the article's flamebait headline suggests its just another excuse for clickbait. if people have a problem with this? then they should outlaw those agreements.
Well lets see..we had politician from the POTUS on down talk about how "deplorable" the video was even though ironically it was based on the events in the Koran, then we have the state trying to see if they can revoke his parole because he used a PC to upload the video, oh and they DID broadcast his name and whereabouts all over the media, so that now he and his family is in hiding. Yeah...not seeing anybody in the USA government saying a damned thing about free speech anywhere.
Of course this is the problem with the lie that is political correctness, one has to bend the law, even warp reality, to follow the path of appeasement. Notice how the try to blame everything on a cheesy video that came out months ago, when all the rioting started on 9/11? Notice how they have a royal fit at someone pointing out what is written in their own book but do NOT have a problem with blatant anti-Jewish and Christian propaganda on their own networks, going so far as to make children's videos about how great jihad is?
This is the problem with political correctness and appeasement, it makes "special classes" that one can't say anything about, even when its the truth, and must bend over backwards for even when they show no courtesy or compassion for any view but their own. I'll end this with some quotes from their very own book, although I wouldn't be surprised if I was modded down and told what a racist I was for using their own words..
Quran 4:89: They (infidels) desire that you should disbelieve as they have disbelieved, so that you might be (all) alike; therefore take not from among them friends until they fly (their homes) in Allah's way; but if they turn back, then seize them and kill them wherever you find them, and take not from among them a friend or a helper.
Quran 8:12: Instill terror into the hearts of the unbelievers;
Quran 2:191: kill the disbelievers wherever we find them
Quran 22:19-22: for them (the unbelievers) garments of fire shall be cut and there shall be poured over their heads boiling water whereby whatever is in their bowels and skin shall be dissolved and they will be punished with hooked iron rods.
Quran 8:12: Your Lord inspired the angels with the message: I will terrorize the unbelievers. Therefore smite them on their necks and every joint and incapacitate them. Strike off their heads and cut off each of their fingers and toes.
Quran 8:7: Allah wished to confirm the truth by His words: Wipe the infidels out to the last.
Quran 8:59: The infidels should not think that they can get away from us. Prepare against them whatever arms and weaponry you can muster so that you may terrorize them. They are your enemy and Allah's enemy.
Yeah religion of peace my ass.
A fellow Ranger owner! Great little trucks aren't they? Nothing fancy, just solid likable little trucks. I recently had to replace the ball joints in mine, first major expense I ever had on the truck since I like you bought outright. Since my truck insurance is on dad's fleet insurance I'm paying about $350 a year, and like you the upkeep? Maybe $300.
So I agree, its just not practical to spend that crazy amount of money on payments, insurance,upkeep, etc just to save a little money on gas. I once sat down and figured up what it would cost me to break even on a hybrid like a Prius and with gas at $4 a gallon if I drove 200 miles a week (which is MUCH higher than I actually drive, most days maybe 20 miles since i live in the middle of town) it would take me over 10 years to just break even and of course the batteries would be out of warranty and the cost to replace? Would blow away any savings from switching.
So until they come up with something like a "People's car" where I can get a diesel that gets 45MPG for under $15k I'll just drive the Ranger until the wheels fall off, just as I wouldn't be surprised to see my oldest graduate medical school and still be driving that little midnight blue S10 of his.
But people that have never had a paid off vehicle just have no idea how much cheaper it is, until I passed 35 when I was paying on a truck the insurance would often cost me as much as the payments, just insane how much they gouge compared to having one paid for. The oldest is 19 and his insurance is only $120 every 3 months which for a male with a sports truck really isn't bad.
But none of those are bringing in enough revenue to keep the lights on which is why canonical is trying this, because desktops just don't sell support contracts (hear of anybody buying a support contract for Windows?) and their server offering is practically dead, everyone uses RH or Cent, and I bet my last dollar they aren't getting a dime for those Dell installs since Dell has to pay an entire dev team to run their own repo and backport everything (because if they use stock Ubuntu the drivers break) so there just isn't any money there, not enough to pay for the R&D and support and bug fixing and regression testing and advertising and all the other things required to compete with the other guys.
The reason RH can make money is twofold, one servers have guys with good educations making six figures to maintain them called admins, so the "update foo broke my printer" kinds of support you see on desktop simply aren't there, not to mention most servers run headless with no sound or other user level crap so its less area to break, and two if a corp finds a serious bug that their admins can't work around? they'll pay RH to fix it.
None of that exists in the desktop market, your users don't even know what they HAVE, much less how to configure it so drivers must NOT break on update, CLI has to go since the users simply won't be able to make heads or tales of it, and the most bug prone elements, such as Pulse, WiFi manager, and X Server, would probably need replacing or forking. Remember users are used to Windows where a PC from 2003 with XP still runs to this very day with ALL drivers functional, so that is the level of simple you'll have to shoot for.
The problem is a good 95%+ of the money spent on improving Linux is NOT in the DEs or userland, its ALL in the server tech as that is what the corps are paying to fix. So Canonical or whomever will have to come up with probably a good 100 million to do all the fixing, regressions testing, yadda yadda yadda,...where will they get the money? How will they recoup their investment, and make enough to continue?
As another user I was speaking to about this said "For a Linux desktop to flourish you'd HAVE to get rid of the redistribution clause" because as he rightly pointed out this isn't something one has to worry about in hardware, you don't have access to factories in China so you can't compete but with software? ZERO barrier to entry, hell any free file hosting would be all that it would take and since you're allowed to just take everything and hand out infinite copies you can't make any money on software ONLY on support or ads or tin cups.
That is why I said the smart move would have been to take a page out of Job's playbook and went BSD for the base. Then they could have made changes to the guts and shared those (as Apple does with CUPS) and kept their userland proprietary. That way they could actually sell copies and not have to worry about competing with their own work. Because the models that traditionally work on Linux simply don't work on the desktop, this is why no company has been able to make a go of it and I predict Canonical will be gone in two years or less, just not enough income coming in.
Now as the other guy said not a security expert or crypto guy so maybe I'm missing something, but with the ability to rent time on these huge monsters like the Amazon cloud and those big Nvidia Tesla boxes won't generating those inputs become a lot more doable?
Maybe somebody here can explain what is meant by "longer than the length of the universe" and more specifically what kind of FLOPS they were looking at when they wrote that? After all just 20 years ago we were using computers below 100MHz and this 6 core AMD I built for cheap would have been a million dollar supercomputer. If we continue to keep cranking like this, won't the ability to distribute the load across so many massive number crunchers for relatively cheap make breaking these a whole lot more doable?
Again if I'm missing something my bad, the deep level math that they use in heavy crypto is honestly beyond me, but I do know cranking through math is what CPUs do best and if Amazon cloud is any indication soon you'll be able to rent something the size and power of Blue Gene for less than a really nice gaming PC which could put it into black hat useful territory.
My big question is....why? Why would you want this? Its not like we don't already have fake leather, and its not like people are gonna give up their burgers and meat lovers pizzas...hmmm..pizza.. so what for? The only upside i can think of is you can alter the color to make colors not of nature, but that's all we need, electric green and neon pink day glo leather outfits.../shudders/.
Congrats sir, you nailed it in one. if you think about it your solution would even solve RMS' classic "printer story" which started the GPL since he'd HAVE the source he needed to fix the problem, he just wouldn't have been able to put out his own version of the software.
The problem is, and after speaking with other who pointed out I was wrong when I called him a communist, is that I truly believe that RMS HATES programmers. I mean when they took him up on his own words when he said that they should give away all their work and make money on documentation? he started complaining and demanding that "documentation should be free!". yet he and the FSF seem to have NO problem taking money from those that gain from that labor such as Intel, nor do you ever see RMS railing on how CEOs or doctors or plumbers should work for nothing ONLY programmers.
In the end I think you'll agree that with unlimited redistribution and no clauses to stop anyone from just offering all your work for nothing there is only 3 ways to make money with Linux, 1.-The support model, which if you think about gives you an incentive to make things a little more PITA than they ought to be because if its truly great why would I need you to support it?, 2.-By selling hardware, such as routers and tablets and what have you, because the software in that case really isn't the product, and 3.-The tin cup model.
But to take a shot at the desktop none of these strategies work, nobody will buy support, you're not gonna be able to compete with the OEMs on hardware when they sell Win 7 Basic netbooks at $199 thanks to insane economies of scale, and the tin cup model won't bring in enough money nor give you any way to plan for a future, as what coder is gonna want to take a job where he knows they might be laid off next quarter because not enough change was thrown in the hat?
To me the really fricking sad part is an OSS desktop was a GREAT idea, a desktop where the OEMs and ODMs couldn't abandon your hardware by refusing to give you drivers for the later versions, but as you said when anybody can redistribute and compete against you without having to give you a cent of the R&D costs how can you possibly stay afloat? Its like a USA manufacturer trying to compete with Chinese slave labor while their factory just dumps toxins out the back door into the ditch. You just can't do it, GPL as is just doesn't work.
Its also a damned shame we won't see Shuttleworth take your advice and make an Ubuntu based on PC-BSD with Debian, then they could actually sell some copies and I'd be right there ready to buy mine, as we little guys have NO love for the way MSFT gouges system builders. Sadly without the money to fork my own distro the constant driver breakage and problems like Pulse screwage makes my after support costs shoot through the roof.
Funny that so many here call me a "dirty evil M$ shill ZOMFG!" when I was one of the first ones on Ubuntu, and had tried every flavor under the sun just trying to find a way NOT to give a quarter of my build price to MSFT. But instead we just get excuses, "works for me!" and name calling. Damned shame because the idea was great, the execution just sucked.
Well the way you could get around the UI problem is a universally installed app along the lines of "Windows Remote Assistance" which was the BIG deal that I pushed my customers hard to switch for. Whomever at MSFT invented that should have gotten a raise and a company car, doesn't matter if they have a dynamic address or NAT, they just give me the code and i can remote in from across town or even in another state. Its a real Godsend when you can actually see what they are seeing and control the whole thing, just wonderful for administration.
And with phones you have ZERO hardware changes for the life of the device, none at all. You'd think Torvalds and the devs futzing wouldn't break the most bog standard stuff but what finally made me give up on Linux in my shop was how many times I'd have fricking plain hardware, your Realtek and Sigmatel onboard that has been around for half a decade, ancient IGPs like Radeon 2x and Intel 8xx chips just crap all over themselves because some dev decided to fiddle with a pointer and crap all over the drivers.
but I agree we need to lay the blame where it belongs, Torvalds and the system devs. Look up the ONLY complaints they had over something as standard as an ABI, which BSD, Solaris, Windows, OSX, even OS/2 has, and you'll see it boils down to "If I have an ABI I can't tweak stuff like I want" which is a classic childish hacker mentality and NOT the mentality of someone who is in charge of code millions depend on. The disconnect as you point out is truly insane, its a game of hot potato with everyone pointing at everyone else and nothing getting done. Its sad but this is why guys like me can't sell and support Linux, and why there will never be a "year of the Linux desktop" because it just costs too much to support.
The problem with that idea, which I agree on the surface makes plenty of sense, is that thanks to the lack of an ABI (which Linux users will scream they don't need, but not only does every. other. major. OS have one but the ONLY argument put forth by a dev was a religious one complete with "I hope all non free drivers break", nice attitude from a kernel dev) the software ends up tied to which kernel you are using, so you jump on the breakage rollercoaster or quickly ALL of the software ends up out of date.
I mean go to ANY major Linux software website and alongside the source and the .deb files you'll see a note about which kernel it uses. that is just a fucked up design and frankly a bad deal if you wanna compete as most Windows software from the late 90s/early 00s will still run, and just about all OSX X86 software will run on the latest release.
So I agree completely with your idea, the problem is until you got as influential as Shuttleworth with his "cadence" mantra you'd be forced to pay devs to backport and run your own custom repo, which ironically is EXACTLY what Dell does to keep Ubuntu from breaking their drivers.
Uhhh..didn't bother to actually READ the link, did you? Because if you did you'd see the original owners of youTube laugh and talk about how they needed to drive users and then sell out before the lawsuits, you'd have read the head of Google video say "We can't compete because all of YouTube's stuff is pirated" and you'd read how the head of Google video had made a system so that the corps could find and remove their stuff easily but youTube put in the ability to have "private" videos that got around the filters.
So why not try reading the actual link, there is literally dozens of pages of emails and chat logs listing quite clearly what was going on and still is, also links to the various ongoing lawsuits Google has against it for snatching other people's stuff.
Uhhh..you DO know that Mint is a knock off and NOT a part of Canonical, yes? The same goes for Kubuntu and Xubuntu as they fired the devs that were making those a couple of years back so now its just some volunteers taking the Ubuntu source and building the DE they like for it.
And THAT is the problem in a nutshell, Canonical can pay $10 million to develop all these features like Launchpad and Wayland and fixing the problems but how will they make their money back, much less make enough to grow so they can do more?
They can't which is why they'll fail and no more advances like we saw from Caonical will be forthcoming. this is why Xandros and Linspire went bust, why RH and Suse only sell corporate, there is just no way to make money on the consumer and small business market with the tin cup or support contract models so companies that try...die.
Exactly and more importantly its nice to see that we aren't getting a billion "that's racist!" for daring to say that man as we know it didn't just come from Africa.
Science doesn't have a damned thing to do with race, it has to do with evidence, and as we find more and more fossils I'd say its pretty obvious that there were probably a dozen, maybe more "offshoots" and those ended up either breeding into the other groups or dying out.
So while there indeed may have been a primitive ancestor in Africa all the mixing with various offshoots like Neanderthal and Peking man is how we ended up the people that we are today.
MSE is good IF, and its a BIG IF, you are not going anywhere risky, as it doesn't seem to do as well on drive bys as the others. This isn't really surprising as it started out as Giant AntiSpy before being bought by MSFT, but if he is going anywhere other than school sites I'd be leery if he isn't tech savvy.
A better choice IMHO and one I've been giving to my customers for a couple of years now is Comodo Antivirus as its butt simple, pretty much install and forget, is free, and is VERY good at stopping malware cold. If you want extra protection it asks on install if you wish to use their secure DNS which blacklists malware sites, but its strictly optional. its light on resources, doesn't pop up 40 ads a week trying to sell you crap like Avast has been doing lately, and has a really nice sandboxing feature that is enabled by default but which you can set to be as granular as you like, anything from off to whitelistsing to blacklisting, really nice.
All in all out of the free AVs I'd rate it "best of show" because not only does it have sane defaults and great sandboxing, but its as simple or as fine grained as you want it to be. With MSE there really isn't any way to change...well anything, with Comodo if you desire you can tweak pretty much everything if you choose, from the behavior of the scanning engine, to the levels of paranoia on the sandboxing (which MSE doesn't do) to who what and when it scans and where it will scan.
But the simple fact is, and I can't believe on a supposedly libertarian leaning site i even have to point this out, TINSTAAFL and sadly with the GPL there isn't really any ways to make money on the desktop other than ads or the tin cup model, which doesn't bring in enough steady revenue to keep the lights on, much less pay for all the devs required to even maintain much less update something the size of Ubuntu. Oh and before someone brings up servers we are talking desktops NOT servers, servers are a different animal and live and die by support contracts, which as RH becoming a billion dollar company proves you CAN make money off GPL software with the enterprise support model.
Does that mean in ANY way that the GPL is bad? of course not, it simply means that NO license can truly fit all possible use cases and desktops are simply one of the places the GPL model doesn't work. As I have pointed out it'll cost a good 100 million plus to bring a Linux desktop to where it can really stand toe to toe against Windows and OSX, all those "update broke my drivers" messes would have to disappear, which means major rebuilds or replacement for Pulse, the Wireless stack, and X Server as well, not to mention forking many of the internals so when Linus and the devs futz with something it won't break drivers. To truly compete you'll need to have at least 7 years of support (halfway between Apple's 5 and MSFT's 10) and the drivers that work at RTM will have to continue working right up to EOL.
But where will this money come from? You can't sell support contracts to consumers, they just won't buy them. You can try to sell hardware but that is a VERY risky game, you either have to get enough buzz you can make high margins like Apple or you'll get caught up in the race to the bottom, so where will it come from? The tin cup model simply won't allow a steady enough income to keep the lights on, much less plan for the future, and from the hatred we see across the web about Canonical's move its doubtful Amazon ads will even pay their light bill.
This is why I say what Shuttleworth should have done was base Ubuntu on one of the BSDs and NOT Linux, as the GPL model simply doesn't work on desktops. that way he would have a way to differentiate his version from the crowd, could charge some small amount (say $10 for Home, $20 for Business) and actually have been able to undercut MSFT while still making money per copy, and he wouldn't have to use cheap stunts like this just to get a working revenue stream.
The GPL and Linux works great on servers, works great when you are selling hardware like embedded, but there just isn't any money to be made with GPL and Linux on the desktop. I mean how many "based on Ubuntu" distros are there now? They can enjoy the millions of dollars worth of work Shuttleworth paid for without giving back a cent. To give an analogy...imagine you spent 10 million to make the perfect lightbulb and will have to sell it at $5 a copy to make a profit. Now imagine thanks to a license that you had to take to get the work started I can just take your design, have it made in China, and give it away to advertise my business without giving you a cent for R&D...how many do you think would buy YOUR lightbulb? How many do you think would be willing to invest their own millions to make it even better, knowing I can just copy and give it away without giving them a cent?
In the end coders have to eat, bills have to be paid, and if you truly want a "year of the Linux desktop" its gonna cost 100 million plus nobody seems to want to pay. At least with BSD, and again not saying one is better than the other, saying they are each useful for different use cases, they would be able to pay for the R&D required to really compete. Instead I predict within 2 years, probably less, Ubuntu will join Xandros and Linspire and all the other failed attempts to actually make a business around Linux desktops.
Its the size of the batteries friend. You seem to be thinking like its a lead acid battery, easy to make in a standard form factor and just "pop and drop" when IRL the batteries on something like a Leaf or a Volt can weigh as much as 700 pounds.
I don't care how you design the shape when you are lifting and lowering 700 pounds there is plenty that can go wrong, it gets dropped on the car, on somebody's foot, it gets lowered too quickly and breaks itself or something in the cradle, all of that will have to be insured and drive up the cost. Not to mention you are gonna have to have someone sitting around just to run the wench and to move that weight safely isn't gonna be a "pop and drop" kinda deal.
And even if you have a vehicle that isn't great on gas if most of your driving is shorter trips with only the occasional long drive it just wouldn't make economic sense to buy that second vehicle, especially when you figure in taxes, tags, and vehicle maintenance
My 99 Ranger frankly is a little piggie (V6 Vulcan, built like a tank but lousy on gas) but since i only drive to the capital (120 mile round trip) about once a month and the visit to take my GF to see her kinfolks is again once a month for 300 round trip and the rest of the time is under 30 miles it makes no economic sense to take on a car payment and the higher insurance premiums when the truck is already paid for and lets me haul loads for family and friends several times a year.
So I don't think the whole "two car" idea really works. Everyone I know with 2 cars have 2 drivers (such as my oldest boy in his S10 while I have my Ranger) so it isn't like the second car is only used occasionally and having a vehicle with such limited range just wouldn't be practical. I mean at first glance it would look like my oldest could trade his S10 for something like an electric, since 90% of his driving is the 10 miles round trip to the local college, but it is that 10%, like when he recently had to drive a friend to another state to attend her grandma's funeral, that would create a real hardship if he didn't have any way to go long distances.
The whole thing is a catch-22, you won't see these take off until the battery tech and charging stations are there, but the infrastructure won't be practical to build until there are enough of them to justify the expense.