Not to mention the tech just isn't there yet. The ONLY way to make these cars 'work" is through heavy government subsidies as the batteries are still too expensive and just don't last long enough.
The last numbers I saw had the average lifespan of the batteries used in these cars as 5 years and the cost to replace them as high as 32k for the Tesla and IIRC it was 17K for the Leaf. Now at those prices you can give up on a used car market for these vehicles as the cost of replacing the batteries will be more than the car itself is worth, and of course those were the optimum numbers which i'm sure with the crazy hot summers in the south or freezing winters in the north battery life will be even worse.
If the government TRULY wanted to make a REAL difference and get us off foreign oil at the same time there is a simple way to do so. Instead of wasting money with huge subsidies on cars that more than half of your population will never afford instead what we need is a true "people's car" that is a diesel that gets 45MPG and sells for less than $20k THEN they could use subsidies and cash for clunkers style programs to get the poor out of all those used cars that average less than 16MPG.
If they were to do that not only would you cut gas usage in half but using carbon capture and bio-diesel you could wean us off of foreign oil for domestically made bio-diesel that would cut down on greenhouse gases and keep the money here in the USA. But no way to get lots of kickbacks for a workable solution (See "Solyndra tip of iceberg" in Google to find articles showing over 20 billion in "green contracts" going to friends of the POTUS) so instead we'll see pointless wastes of money which as you pointed out without infrastructure will never catch on anyway. With a 45MPG people's car they could get gas anywhere in the USA and then work to switch the pumps over to bio-diesel without having to build this huge electrical support grid, which if we don't close the coal plants is just shifting the problem anyway. What a waste, but that seems to be SOP when it comes to government programs anymore.
Hell its worse than that, as we saw here a few months ago MSFT is paying $500+ in ads for every single user they get to pay $50 to take a Lumia on contract, so not only does John Average not want the phone but they took a bath on the few they lured. And of course thanks to the morons announcing no win 8 update for current phones they made the entire line worthless overnight, they can advertise until hell freezes over but who wants to be locked into a 2 year contract on a phone that has already been labeled EOL by the company that makes the OS? It would be like buying new XP boxes now, totally pointless.
I have a feeling WP8 is gonna be the final nail in Ballmer's coffin, the shareholders aren't gonna put up with him shitting billions of company money down the crapper on another Vista sized failbomb. he's already blown billions on WP7 and gone nowhere, and now he's gonna crap on the desktop, one of the few money making sacred cows they have left, to try to get app devs for a phone that nobody wants...yeah, not seeing that work too well.
Final verdict? Android #1 because of all the CCC (Cheapo Chinese Crap) while Apple won't care because they'll be making 40%+ markup on their products and still have lines around the block on launch, WP8 will be right down there with Symbian and RIM and "other" in the "niche products nobody gives a shit about" category. This is what happens when you don't give the customer what they want, they go elsewhere.
Riiight, all corporate cares about is source code, because they got that with their BB phones and Windows desktops...oh wait. Nobody cares dude, nobody but the programmers that view having source as a mantra give a rat's ass, all they care about is "does it do the jobs I have" and Android answers that with a big YES by having the same Exchange support as the other guys but having better encryption that can be centrally managed.
Because if you think fortune 500 companies are paying coders to sit on ass all day reading source code I have an invisible unicorn you might be interested in. Show me ONE, just one mind you, article from a fortune 500 company talking about how they chose Android phones because they could audit source. You won't be able to because like Unicorns and the Easter Bunny they simply don't exist. Again if the corps gave a rat's ass about that then Windows desktops wouldn't be the de facto standard in the corporate world because MSFT sure isn't handing out the source code to Windows.
Blue screens? Seriously? WTF are you running, some 7 year old plus XP installs? Its called let go of the fricking decade old patched all to hell creaky as fuck ancient history and get Windows 7 already! I have YET to see a Win 7 BSOD, I'm sure that they can happen, but its so rare that if I ever did see one I'd be checking for hardware failures, and I work on Windows machines 6 days a week. Hell even Vista for all its pains in the ass was extremely hard to BSOD unless you ran some alpha quality graphics driver and now even that doesn't crash Win 7, it simply restarts the graphics driver, doesn't even make you close any programs.
As for WP7? Unless the PHBs that do the buying were getting nice lunches with a MS marketer i don't see the selling point. The WP phones that are out don't have either the nicer displays of iPhone nor the nicer features of the Droid phones, has less apps than both of those, and from what I've been reading doesn't even have steller AD and group management which you think if nothing else MSFT would have gotten right, seeing how WinServer is their product and all.
Of course WinPhone suffers from the same myopic focus that MSFT has had of late, their insane consumer only focus that has them pushing brain dead ideas like Metro on Win 8 Pro, like business users want their workers with a tweeting, twitting, FB shitting social page for a start screen. Yep that will get them working, have constant FB updates and other crap distracting them...sigh. Ballmer makes the Pepsi guy's rein at Apple look like the work of a fricking genius. And if the past is any indication I hope they'll be ready to toss those phones when the next WinPhone version comes out because it probably won't get an update.
Lets see...an account just made and the ONLY post they have is a FP plugging a product...sigh this is just sad.
For those that scream "You must be teh shill!" because i find faults in the product you love? See THIS FP by "androidlover" which to their credit they tried choosing a UID that would make them sound like they were NOT shilling...only they forgot to even name android, even though its one of the fastest growing market segments and as we saw here recently MSFT pays $500 to get people to sign a $50 contract for a Nokia Lumia and STILL can't get rid of the damned things.
Sorry folks but I'm not a shill, I have just found your product lacking while THIS^^^^ This right here is a shill.
As for TFA the problem with RIM is NOT the iPhone and Android, WinPhone isn't even on the radar as Ballmer fucked up and didn't give it good AD and GPO support, its the fact they sat on ass and didn't bother to make any exciting new products or try to grow their product towards other demographics. You see if they would have had exciting new product lines? Wouldn't NEED to grow their product lines into other demographics as their business userbase was a pretty loyal bunch. RIM had decent exchange support, good security features, heck they could brag the POTUS was hooked on their products.
But instead of using that money to come out with exciting new products and features for that userbase, thus giving them a reason to stick with their product, they basically sat on ass for years just producing the same phone over and over and over. Now if they had a good enough design they might have been able to do that if they would have reached out to new users but again all they did was sat on ass and produced the same design for the same demographic so naturally they got bored and tired of waiting so they went somewhere else. I would argue BYOD is nothing but users getting tired of decent solutions for their problems not being made so they said "fuck it" and try to come up with their own.
So sorry RIM, you deserve to join Palm, Nokia, and even MSFT mobile in the pile of failed products because like them you sat on ass, didn't listen to the customers or give them exciting products they would want to buy, and now its too late because your potential customers have moved on.
Actually as someone that actually does that for a living? I can tell you Windows, if done right, really shouldn't be bringing any repeat business, just referrals. Linux on the other hand has pulse breaking, X server issues, WiFi is a mess, and it tends to hose one or more systems every single update. I have Windows users that go years without needing me, even my "disaster area" client Ms. Pipkin only needs me once or twice a year and those are when she does a "WTF?" like tonight when i remoted into her system and she had FIVE, I shit you not, FIVE antiviruses running.
Believe me it is NOT the UI, if it was just that I'd just stick to a set of standard apps and KDE and be happy to sell linux boxes besides the Windows boxes, but its the after sales support, the constant beta quality futzing the devs do, that make it not worth dealing with. Hell Dell has to run their own fricking repo even though they only offer 8 Ubuntu models! Its THAT level of hassle that keeps little guys like me from supporting Linux, not the UIs.
Thanks again, and more importantly what would have NOT happened if they went BSD? they wouldn't have had a good dozen "Based on Ubuntu" copies making sure they never had a chance of selling a single copy!
Imagine, for all those that don't get it, that you spent millions making the perfect lightbulb, its perfect in every way but because of the millions you spent making it you need $5 a piece to make any profit, and $3 just to break even. But now imagine that thanks to a license I can simply take that exact design you just spent millions on, get it cranked out in China, and sell it for 99c because its only costing me 76c to make it. you'd be pissed, right? And nobody would follow in your footsteps, who'd want to be in that business?
Which is EXACTLY why I say GPL works in SOME places but it does NOT, I repeat DOES NOT work in ALL places, and desktops are one of those places. There is simply no way to pay for all the support, the coders, the building and lights and advertising and all the other things that go into truly taking on OSX and Windows because thanks to the way the GPL is set up there is simply no way to make any money on desktops. Again I hate having to say this but every time you point this out someone will bring up servers, that's like saying there is no money in small trucks and they say "But I'm making good money selling boats"...WTF? not even the same thing, not even close, the only thing in common is they both run X86 hardware.
With BSD they could have fixed any disadvantages and more importantly KEPT that work so that they could actually sell the OS at...ohhh lets say $20 a copy, and thus could have stayed afloat. Now Shuttleworth has blown millions of dollars and all they'll get for it is a spot in the dustbin where linspire and Xandros and every other company that tried to use linux to make a great desktop OS, there just isn't any way to make money on GPL if it isn't corporate.
Thanks for seeing what I was getting at but I think the bigger point is the "year of the linux desktop" myth will stay just that, simply because there is NO way to make money on a Linux desktop and the costs of bringing Linux up to the levels of OSX and Win 7 are simply too high.
Now the GPL/Linux way of doing things works in server because corporations not only pay admins to deal with problems but spend millions of dollars on support to get the things that are giving them trouble fixed., the same is true of embedded work. But on the desktop i could literally wallpaper this page with show stopping bugs, things neither Windows nor OSX users have had to deal with in YEARS, but they don't get fixed simply because there is no money there.
To have a Linux that could stand toe to toe with the others you'd need a good 100 million dollars worth of work, because the distro would HAVE to work from RTM to EOL in say 7 years with NO breakage. Sure you once in a blue moon you hear of some update breaking some obscure Windows driver, but its rare.How many times have you heard of an update wasting pulse or breaking WiFi? Far too often. So Sound,WiFi, and probably X would have to go, and they'd have to fork most of the internals because Torvalds and company are notorious for treating the internals like their own pet projects and not caring about breakage, so 100 million minimum.
The mistake Shuttleworth made was using linux in the first place as there is simply no way to make money other than 1.-Support contracts like enterprise, or 2.-The tin cup which simply won't pay for the amount of work required. So he should have went BSD, where you would be welcome to the original files but the stuff Canonical built on top would be theirs to sell, just as Apple did. As you noted you try charging for Linux, hell even just having ads, and the users just go to one of the 50 "based on" versions of Ubuntu, where they get the advantages of all the work Shuttleworth paid for but without having to give anything for it.
The simple fact is that while RMS may think coders are worthless (notice how the FSF has NO problem taking money from big corps like Intel, and you never EVER hear RMS railing on how CEOs or doctors or plumbers should work for free, ONLY coders) but IRL they have to pay for their education, healthcare, a home, food, to get the quality of coders and the amount you'd need to make linux world class in the desktop arena simply can't happen because with the GPL you have to give away all the work you do, meaning I can just set up a website, copy you down to the last file, and offer it for free. Now what desktop user is gonna pay YOU when I can do that?
Nah there is a GREAT shot of Ballmer sticking his tongue out looking like a smartass douchebag, take that image and put a MSFT beanie on his head and you would have the PERFECT icon for Ballmer's MSFT, a "screw the customers we don't care" attitude and childish design siginified by the beanie. If you wanted to make it even better you could simply make the beanie in MSFT colors and instead have "I heart tablets" on the cap, pretty much all they seem to care about anymore.
In any case the Borg is EXACTLY the wrong icon, Gates was the one that had the whole EEE thing going on, he was the little nasty nerd that would crush you like a bug, Ballmer? he's the PHB from Dilbert, dangerous only to shareholders and users of their products, chasing buzzwords and generally acting clueless. he's got as much to do with the Borg as the Sham-wow guy, he's just a huckster.
The royal bitch is we have more than enough evidence to prove Google knew BEFORE they bought YouTube that it was nothing but a video version of TPB or Grokster, there are even emails from the Google Video guys saying "We can't host that stuff, nearly every video on their site is infringing"...yet they bought it anyway.
Read the emails and you'll see there is one set of laws for large megacorps like Google, another for the little guys. hell the emails from the YouTube guys to each other were basically "Build the shit out of the userbase and sell it to a sucker and bail before the lawsuits hit" only by selling to Google the lawsuits never showed up.
Thank you. I'm sure you got that from some about page and this IS the Internet, where they have these things called "hyperlinks". So would it REALLY have killed someone to put the parties names in hyperlinks that led to at least one fricking about page?
That said...WHAT THE FUCK PEOPLE????? What? Why? Who in the hell thought it was a good idea to turn the fricking Pi, a device designed to be cheap above all, into a fricking MEDIA CENTER? Now robotics, UAVs, remote control systems of all sorts? yeah I can see that. But looking at these things you pretty much have to massage the fuck out of your media to make it run on the thing and even then its hit or miss...why? Why would you do that?
You want an actual FUNCTIONAL media center? here you go...E350 in a nice HTPC case and there is even a free Linux HTPC build for it, couldn't be simpler. And unlike the Pi you won't spend weeks massaging the hell out of your formats, it'll play pretty much any format out of the box and only uses 18w under load and idles around 6w.
So no wonder I didn't know what this was, the thought of even attempting something so frankly pointless was simply beyond me. To use a/. car analogy this is like buying a car known for its hyper fuel efficiency and then using it to pull a boat. Sure you might get it to work for awhile but you are gonna spend more time working on the damned thing or dealing with problems than it is worth. media decoding and scaling is NOT a light task and a wimpy CPU like the Pi wasn't made for that task, not even close. Hell does it even have the broadcom decoder chip? Even if it does it'll be limited as hell for that role, it just makes no sense.
Lets see if I get modded down again like I did last time I asked this...WTF is Xbian? What does it do, what is the difference between it and the other and WTF does the other do?
All I can figure out is it has something to do with Raspberry pi from the title, which is a niche product so this is niche software that runs on a niche product...is it REALLY so much to ask for to have a fricking "about" link in TFS?
Oh lord its a FOSSie! I love how new features are fine...as long as you don't get paid because that's BAD wharrgarbl! Communism failed you know, LO is frankly years behind simply because they don't have the money to keep up. Would you like a list of huge major problems in Linux? Again nobody pays, problems don't get fixed. they get fixed in SERVER, because corps pay millions to get it fixed, see red hat becoming a billion dollar company for proof they pay, desktop no money for free so you get free crap.
And if I give you a shit sandwich for free...are you gonna thank me? because you are welcome to have my garbage if you want it, why aren't you thanking me? if your argument worked we'd all be using free OSes and nobody would buy MS Office, the fact that people steal MS Office by HUGE amounts compared to taking LO for free (last figures i saw was 8 to 1) so your entire argument? Worthless. does Apple support 9 year old versions of iWork? Nope. Does LO support 9 year old version of OO.o? And do NOT say its free, because its bloated by 300%, run OO.o 1.0 and compare its usage to the latest LO so it is NOT free, its sucking resources which I paid for, so why is it not supported?
Its not supported because it would bloat the living hell out of the program....just like...supporting versions that were replaced ages ago in MS Office. If they don't like it? welcome to take your hippy dippy free crap, the fact that they don't WANT your free crap? should smack you with the cluebat.
Moving the goalposts, I even mentioned Red hat and pointed out that SERVERS and desktops are as different as a corporate yacht and a dingy, there really is NO comparison. Corporations WILL pay for support, consumers and SMBs won't, not for a desktop, and as we have seen time and time again the GPL ends up leaving the desktop company with a "tin cup" model that makes it impossible to plan for the future.
so sorry, not talking about servers, routers, or what runs on the toaster, talking about desktops which the death of Canonical will put the final nail in the "year of the Linux desktop" myth. Oh the community won't accept it, they too will try to move the goalposts by claiming cell phones are the new desktops (horseshit) or that since the webservers are Linux that means they "won" (again horseshit, that's like routers, backend crap nobody that isn't in corp sees nor cares about) but in the end the simple fact is the GPL means you just can't make a living on the desktop, never happen.
What is gonna be really fucking scary is picture what happened with Libya, now picture it with nukes. if you think those in power will go gently into that good night, possibly facing prosecution for all the dirty deals they have been doing, then you got another thing coming.
More likely you'll see the military split in two, just as it did in Libya, with M-1 against M-1 and Apache against Apache. When, not if, when the bubble bursts you are gonna be looking at 10s of millions of people, the poor, elderly, cripples, without any way to take care of themselves because the government won't be able to pay its debts and the money will be like the Zimbabwean dollar, totally worthless. Mass rioting, looting, it'll make NO after Katrina look like Sunday in the park.
Personally, and its scary as hell just thinking about it, but I could EASILY see the USA going the route of 1933 Germany, and just deciding to take what we want, like say South America. who would stand up to the USSA? China? Tell them they are welcome to Africa and they'll bow out, Russia? Putin is ex KGB, I'm sure he'd like some of eastern EU and part of Alaska back, so who would that leave? the UK? France? as you pointed out America has an insane number of weapons, hell we have 11 aircraft carriers to the next largest nations 2 and waaay too many nuclear subs.
In any case i doubt seriously the bubble will last another decade, a few more countries in the EU fail and the whole thing will fall down like a house of cards. I'm starting to wonder if that crazy Russian economist is right, and the USA will go the way of the USSR and just break up, with small groups of states banding together instead of the big giant mess we have now.Any way you slice it its gonna be nasty and those in the EU that cheer the thought of "the end of the American empire" really ought to look at their history at what happens when highly militarized nations crumble, it ain't pretty.
He who buys into walled garden shouldn't be surprised if the view sucks.
Seriously man this IS Apple we are talking about, a company that makes Ballmer's MSFT look like the Care Bears. "Apple products" and "playing nice" are two phrases that don't go together, in fact they hate each other. Its not like any of this is a secret, its been SOP at Apple for as long as I can remember.
Friend please watch this video which explains better than i ever could why your argument just doesn't hold water. you are the peasant, they have the power of force, you have occupy, they have the police. unless your last name is Buffet or Gates you can jump and scream and vote until you are blue in the face, as another put it "Its not even Coke VS Pepsi, Coke and Pepsi compete. this is Coke VS Coke in a decorative bottle"
Uhh before you wharrgarbl you MIGHT want to see what the grandparent was talking about, specifically Excel which if you've ever dealt with Excel jockeys you'd know they ALWAYS use the most bleeding edge features, since they treat it more like an IDE than a spreadsheet.
Now is this the best way to do things? of course not but as long as we have BOFH that won't let users have an IDE but WILL let them have Excel and Access this is reality. Again we are talking about a 9 year old version, no shit its not gonna support the latest scripting and macros.
finally how does that change the fact that the same thing Apple and Linux get praised for, "cutting the cruft" and losing BC is EXACTLY what everyone is complaining about when it comes to MSFT, only with the opposite argument? MSFT is already 3 versions past 2K3 yet you expect them to backport every thing just because somebody wants to use 9+ year old software? tell me, do you think MSFT should be forced to support XP until 2020 because a few don't want to let go?
Actually what we need is to replace JavaScript. I mean Good Lord the thing was designed in an earlier and frankly more naive age, they even named it after Java because java was supposed to be the "next new thing" and they wanted to ride the buzz. It was just never designed for security and with more and more crap bolted to it to allow webapps it just gets worse every year. heck block all ads and watch the malware drop, the design just isn't very good for today's threats.
No what we need is a new language designed from the ground up for isolation and sandboxing, where ALL code is treated as totally untrusted and locked in a little box no matter what. We have browsers bolting this functionality on but honestly its turd polishing, JavaScript just wasn't meant to be in any way secure but with more and more of our banking and shopping done online we need a newer better design. Perhaps something more virtual machine like where the regular web gets locked into a sandbox with practically no permissions, and then a limited whitelist set up by the user for banks, shopping, etc that uses a completely different VMed browser instance with zero in common.
Is it just me, or does anyone else find this ironic? I mean we hear constant screams about MSFT having too much cruft and backwards compatibility holding things back yet here you are complaining that a NINE YEAR OLD version of office won't deal with the latest formats other than as a viewer. Serious dude who supports NINE year old software besides MSFT? last I checked you get 5 years on Apple, I doubt very seriously you'd get anything but word salad if you tried to open the latest LO ODF files on OO.o 1.0, if it would open at all or even install on a current Linux, yet MSFT is support software forever and still NOT have cruft and bloat?
The fact that they even gave you a compatibility pack at all was more than the other guys, so maybe if you need it that bad you might want to just pick up a copy of something from this decade, yes?
So why not keep the parts that do work and just buy the ones that need Excel 2010 a copy of Excel 2010 and call it a day?
The problem with Excel is that the Excel jockeys really push the limits when it comes to using the features so sticking with the old version doesn't really work. Word? meh I've had no problem editing and saving Word 2K10 files in Word 2k, most folks don't use any more features now than they did then. Sure they like the preview bit in 2K7 and 2K10, but that doesn't affect the final document.
With Excel on the other hand they are using every feature and then some, adding macros all over the place and using it almost as much as a programming tool as a spreadsheet. Now I understand why, its because too many companies have BOFH that lock the shit out of everything and won't let them having IDEs or DBs but what does every desktop seem to have? Excel and Access, so they use what they have. But that means that since they are really pushing it you have to keep up when it comes to those two, Excel especially.
A couple of my SMB customers had the same problem so i just got them the newest Excel and they are happy. Powerpoint works fine, Word works fine, the ones I deal with aren't big on Access (thank the FSM) so by just buying the one program that needed updating they are able to get along just fine.
I think what the guy meant is the actual scientific limits are never reached thanks to political BS, with commodities you have subsidies and protectionism and hand outs constantly distorting the market so we never get to see what is actually able to be accomplished thanks to political crap.
If that is what he meant? I have to say I agree, because the scientific method has never really been allowed to deal with crops on a large scale because of big agriculture and government being such friendly bedfellows. You get paid not to grow, or they distort the market so that one crop is worth a hell of a lot more than it should be, and that throws the science right out the window because who is gonna turn down "free" money?
But I agree 100%, with water recyclers and desalination plants and greenhouses we could probably make deserts into breadbaskets but again here comes politics, you'll get the greenies screaming about threatening some lizard and the big agri lobbyists demanding protection and soon the whole thing would be another political clusterfuck.
I was gonna say that as well, hell the POTUS just gives a flowery "LOL fuck you peasant" to any petition that doesn't follow the corporate line. I mean if online petitions to our own government, you know the people that are SUPPOSED to listen to us, are so worthless they actually created a "please stop ignoring us" petition then WTF does anybody think some techno-corp like twitter is gonna care?
Vote with your feet and walk away, that is pretty much the only things the corps notice anymore, dwindling marketshare. At least THAT we do have evidence that it works, see EA being up for sale and Ubisoft getting rid of its always online "You filthy pirate! How dare you buy our products!" worthless DRM. Corps notice when the money dries up and their marketshare takes a giant nosedive, anything else? I'm shocked they just don't tweet a picture of Goatse to the petitioners for all they'll care.
Sorry but if you think voting or even the little occupy crap can change a system where billions are changing hands? I have some magic beans you might be interested in.
I urge you watch a little video, no fancy graphics, just a little Jewish girl on a stage pointing out similarities to previous points in history titled the end of America which really nails what you WILL be seeing here in the future. oh and about voting here is another truly great video that explains with a lot of passion why it simply can't change anything.
all you can do is grab as much as you can and be ready for the fall, which is coming. We had 120% of GDP in the market before the great depression and now its at 430% and rising including everyone's retirements in the form of 401K and 403B. when this bubble bursts you are gonna see what nasty is, I'm predicting a Libya style situation as we'll be looking at 50%+ unemployment and the government and banks defaulting. Gonna be nasty, keep your head down and be ready, its all you can do now, the burst is inevitable and unstoppable.
To you and all the "I don't mind paying ACs" I have to call BULLSHIT. Do I REALLY need to list how many went tits up because rather than spend a dollar the users just jumped onto "Bob's distro" and left the devs high and dry? Mandriva, Linspire, Xandros, I could hit the wiki and fill that list out but why bother? Linux users WILL NOT PAY. Oh sure they'll throw a few more bucks to charity like the humble bundles, but actually pay for their OS? Well hell freezes over.
As i have said in the past it would cost a minimum of 100 million dollars to make linux truly competitive with Windows and OSX (If I listed all the parts that would have to be forked or replaced this would look like war & peace) but as we are seeing with Canonical its easier to squeeze blood out of a stone than get Linux users to pay for an OS. In the end free as in beer trumps all. How many of you work for free? How many of you donate your time in large quantities to do the truly shit work in Linux, like documentation, regression testing, bug fixing, QA and QC? Yeah, thought so.
This, this right here, is why FOSS as a philosophy yields more half baked incomplete software than anything else, because while everyone wants the OTHER guy to work for nothing THEY want to get paid. in a way I'd argue its the failure of communism all over again. Oh and before anybody mentions servers or Android? Google pays ONE BILLION DOLLARS for Android development and the fortune 500 companies pay hundreds of millions for Linux server development, Linux desktops? here is $3 and a candy bar. the money just isn't there and as Canonical found out you'll go broke long before you get it ready for the masses. Shuttleworth really should have went BSD, then he could have sold his OS because he could have kept his changes. How many "Ubuntu derived" distros are there? I rest my case.
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Not to mention the tech just isn't there yet. The ONLY way to make these cars 'work" is through heavy government subsidies as the batteries are still too expensive and just don't last long enough.
The last numbers I saw had the average lifespan of the batteries used in these cars as 5 years and the cost to replace them as high as 32k for the Tesla and IIRC it was 17K for the Leaf. Now at those prices you can give up on a used car market for these vehicles as the cost of replacing the batteries will be more than the car itself is worth, and of course those were the optimum numbers which i'm sure with the crazy hot summers in the south or freezing winters in the north battery life will be even worse.
If the government TRULY wanted to make a REAL difference and get us off foreign oil at the same time there is a simple way to do so. Instead of wasting money with huge subsidies on cars that more than half of your population will never afford instead what we need is a true "people's car" that is a diesel that gets 45MPG and sells for less than $20k THEN they could use subsidies and cash for clunkers style programs to get the poor out of all those used cars that average less than 16MPG.
If they were to do that not only would you cut gas usage in half but using carbon capture and bio-diesel you could wean us off of foreign oil for domestically made bio-diesel that would cut down on greenhouse gases and keep the money here in the USA. But no way to get lots of kickbacks for a workable solution (See "Solyndra tip of iceberg" in Google to find articles showing over 20 billion in "green contracts" going to friends of the POTUS) so instead we'll see pointless wastes of money which as you pointed out without infrastructure will never catch on anyway. With a 45MPG people's car they could get gas anywhere in the USA and then work to switch the pumps over to bio-diesel without having to build this huge electrical support grid, which if we don't close the coal plants is just shifting the problem anyway. What a waste, but that seems to be SOP when it comes to government programs anymore.
Hell its worse than that, as we saw here a few months ago MSFT is paying $500+ in ads for every single user they get to pay $50 to take a Lumia on contract, so not only does John Average not want the phone but they took a bath on the few they lured. And of course thanks to the morons announcing no win 8 update for current phones they made the entire line worthless overnight, they can advertise until hell freezes over but who wants to be locked into a 2 year contract on a phone that has already been labeled EOL by the company that makes the OS? It would be like buying new XP boxes now, totally pointless.
I have a feeling WP8 is gonna be the final nail in Ballmer's coffin, the shareholders aren't gonna put up with him shitting billions of company money down the crapper on another Vista sized failbomb. he's already blown billions on WP7 and gone nowhere, and now he's gonna crap on the desktop, one of the few money making sacred cows they have left, to try to get app devs for a phone that nobody wants...yeah, not seeing that work too well.
Final verdict? Android #1 because of all the CCC (Cheapo Chinese Crap) while Apple won't care because they'll be making 40%+ markup on their products and still have lines around the block on launch, WP8 will be right down there with Symbian and RIM and "other" in the "niche products nobody gives a shit about" category. This is what happens when you don't give the customer what they want, they go elsewhere.
Riiight, all corporate cares about is source code, because they got that with their BB phones and Windows desktops...oh wait. Nobody cares dude, nobody but the programmers that view having source as a mantra give a rat's ass, all they care about is "does it do the jobs I have" and Android answers that with a big YES by having the same Exchange support as the other guys but having better encryption that can be centrally managed.
Because if you think fortune 500 companies are paying coders to sit on ass all day reading source code I have an invisible unicorn you might be interested in. Show me ONE, just one mind you, article from a fortune 500 company talking about how they chose Android phones because they could audit source. You won't be able to because like Unicorns and the Easter Bunny they simply don't exist. Again if the corps gave a rat's ass about that then Windows desktops wouldn't be the de facto standard in the corporate world because MSFT sure isn't handing out the source code to Windows.
Blue screens? Seriously? WTF are you running, some 7 year old plus XP installs? Its called let go of the fricking decade old patched all to hell creaky as fuck ancient history and get Windows 7 already! I have YET to see a Win 7 BSOD, I'm sure that they can happen, but its so rare that if I ever did see one I'd be checking for hardware failures, and I work on Windows machines 6 days a week. Hell even Vista for all its pains in the ass was extremely hard to BSOD unless you ran some alpha quality graphics driver and now even that doesn't crash Win 7, it simply restarts the graphics driver, doesn't even make you close any programs.
As for WP7? Unless the PHBs that do the buying were getting nice lunches with a MS marketer i don't see the selling point. The WP phones that are out don't have either the nicer displays of iPhone nor the nicer features of the Droid phones, has less apps than both of those, and from what I've been reading doesn't even have steller AD and group management which you think if nothing else MSFT would have gotten right, seeing how WinServer is their product and all.
Of course WinPhone suffers from the same myopic focus that MSFT has had of late, their insane consumer only focus that has them pushing brain dead ideas like Metro on Win 8 Pro, like business users want their workers with a tweeting, twitting, FB shitting social page for a start screen. Yep that will get them working, have constant FB updates and other crap distracting them...sigh. Ballmer makes the Pepsi guy's rein at Apple look like the work of a fricking genius. And if the past is any indication I hope they'll be ready to toss those phones when the next WinPhone version comes out because it probably won't get an update.
Lets see...an account just made and the ONLY post they have is a FP plugging a product...sigh this is just sad.
For those that scream "You must be teh shill!" because i find faults in the product you love? See THIS FP by "androidlover" which to their credit they tried choosing a UID that would make them sound like they were NOT shilling...only they forgot to even name android, even though its one of the fastest growing market segments and as we saw here recently MSFT pays $500 to get people to sign a $50 contract for a Nokia Lumia and STILL can't get rid of the damned things.
Sorry folks but I'm not a shill, I have just found your product lacking while THIS^^^^ This right here is a shill.
As for TFA the problem with RIM is NOT the iPhone and Android, WinPhone isn't even on the radar as Ballmer fucked up and didn't give it good AD and GPO support, its the fact they sat on ass and didn't bother to make any exciting new products or try to grow their product towards other demographics. You see if they would have had exciting new product lines? Wouldn't NEED to grow their product lines into other demographics as their business userbase was a pretty loyal bunch. RIM had decent exchange support, good security features, heck they could brag the POTUS was hooked on their products.
But instead of using that money to come out with exciting new products and features for that userbase, thus giving them a reason to stick with their product, they basically sat on ass for years just producing the same phone over and over and over. Now if they had a good enough design they might have been able to do that if they would have reached out to new users but again all they did was sat on ass and produced the same design for the same demographic so naturally they got bored and tired of waiting so they went somewhere else. I would argue BYOD is nothing but users getting tired of decent solutions for their problems not being made so they said "fuck it" and try to come up with their own.
So sorry RIM, you deserve to join Palm, Nokia, and even MSFT mobile in the pile of failed products because like them you sat on ass, didn't listen to the customers or give them exciting products they would want to buy, and now its too late because your potential customers have moved on.
Actually as someone that actually does that for a living? I can tell you Windows, if done right, really shouldn't be bringing any repeat business, just referrals. Linux on the other hand has pulse breaking, X server issues, WiFi is a mess, and it tends to hose one or more systems every single update. I have Windows users that go years without needing me, even my "disaster area" client Ms. Pipkin only needs me once or twice a year and those are when she does a "WTF?" like tonight when i remoted into her system and she had FIVE, I shit you not, FIVE antiviruses running.
Believe me it is NOT the UI, if it was just that I'd just stick to a set of standard apps and KDE and be happy to sell linux boxes besides the Windows boxes, but its the after sales support, the constant beta quality futzing the devs do, that make it not worth dealing with. Hell Dell has to run their own fricking repo even though they only offer 8 Ubuntu models! Its THAT level of hassle that keeps little guys like me from supporting Linux, not the UIs.
Thanks again, and more importantly what would have NOT happened if they went BSD? they wouldn't have had a good dozen "Based on Ubuntu" copies making sure they never had a chance of selling a single copy!
Imagine, for all those that don't get it, that you spent millions making the perfect lightbulb, its perfect in every way but because of the millions you spent making it you need $5 a piece to make any profit, and $3 just to break even. But now imagine that thanks to a license I can simply take that exact design you just spent millions on, get it cranked out in China, and sell it for 99c because its only costing me 76c to make it. you'd be pissed, right? And nobody would follow in your footsteps, who'd want to be in that business?
Which is EXACTLY why I say GPL works in SOME places but it does NOT, I repeat DOES NOT work in ALL places, and desktops are one of those places. There is simply no way to pay for all the support, the coders, the building and lights and advertising and all the other things that go into truly taking on OSX and Windows because thanks to the way the GPL is set up there is simply no way to make any money on desktops. Again I hate having to say this but every time you point this out someone will bring up servers, that's like saying there is no money in small trucks and they say "But I'm making good money selling boats"...WTF? not even the same thing, not even close, the only thing in common is they both run X86 hardware.
With BSD they could have fixed any disadvantages and more importantly KEPT that work so that they could actually sell the OS at...ohhh lets say $20 a copy, and thus could have stayed afloat. Now Shuttleworth has blown millions of dollars and all they'll get for it is a spot in the dustbin where linspire and Xandros and every other company that tried to use linux to make a great desktop OS, there just isn't any way to make money on GPL if it isn't corporate.
Thanks for seeing what I was getting at but I think the bigger point is the "year of the linux desktop" myth will stay just that, simply because there is NO way to make money on a Linux desktop and the costs of bringing Linux up to the levels of OSX and Win 7 are simply too high.
Now the GPL/Linux way of doing things works in server because corporations not only pay admins to deal with problems but spend millions of dollars on support to get the things that are giving them trouble fixed., the same is true of embedded work. But on the desktop i could literally wallpaper this page with show stopping bugs, things neither Windows nor OSX users have had to deal with in YEARS, but they don't get fixed simply because there is no money there.
To have a Linux that could stand toe to toe with the others you'd need a good 100 million dollars worth of work, because the distro would HAVE to work from RTM to EOL in say 7 years with NO breakage. Sure you once in a blue moon you hear of some update breaking some obscure Windows driver, but its rare.How many times have you heard of an update wasting pulse or breaking WiFi? Far too often. So Sound,WiFi, and probably X would have to go, and they'd have to fork most of the internals because Torvalds and company are notorious for treating the internals like their own pet projects and not caring about breakage, so 100 million minimum.
The mistake Shuttleworth made was using linux in the first place as there is simply no way to make money other than 1.-Support contracts like enterprise, or 2.-The tin cup which simply won't pay for the amount of work required. So he should have went BSD, where you would be welcome to the original files but the stuff Canonical built on top would be theirs to sell, just as Apple did. As you noted you try charging for Linux, hell even just having ads, and the users just go to one of the 50 "based on" versions of Ubuntu, where they get the advantages of all the work Shuttleworth paid for but without having to give anything for it.
The simple fact is that while RMS may think coders are worthless (notice how the FSF has NO problem taking money from big corps like Intel, and you never EVER hear RMS railing on how CEOs or doctors or plumbers should work for free, ONLY coders) but IRL they have to pay for their education, healthcare, a home, food, to get the quality of coders and the amount you'd need to make linux world class in the desktop arena simply can't happen because with the GPL you have to give away all the work you do, meaning I can just set up a website, copy you down to the last file, and offer it for free. Now what desktop user is gonna pay YOU when I can do that?
Nah there is a GREAT shot of Ballmer sticking his tongue out looking like a smartass douchebag, take that image and put a MSFT beanie on his head and you would have the PERFECT icon for Ballmer's MSFT, a "screw the customers we don't care" attitude and childish design siginified by the beanie. If you wanted to make it even better you could simply make the beanie in MSFT colors and instead have "I heart tablets" on the cap, pretty much all they seem to care about anymore.
In any case the Borg is EXACTLY the wrong icon, Gates was the one that had the whole EEE thing going on, he was the little nasty nerd that would crush you like a bug, Ballmer? he's the PHB from Dilbert, dangerous only to shareholders and users of their products, chasing buzzwords and generally acting clueless. he's got as much to do with the Borg as the Sham-wow guy, he's just a huckster.
The royal bitch is we have more than enough evidence to prove Google knew BEFORE they bought YouTube that it was nothing but a video version of TPB or Grokster, there are even emails from the Google Video guys saying "We can't host that stuff, nearly every video on their site is infringing"...yet they bought it anyway.
Read the emails and you'll see there is one set of laws for large megacorps like Google, another for the little guys. hell the emails from the YouTube guys to each other were basically "Build the shit out of the userbase and sell it to a sucker and bail before the lawsuits hit" only by selling to Google the lawsuits never showed up.
Thank you. I'm sure you got that from some about page and this IS the Internet, where they have these things called "hyperlinks". So would it REALLY have killed someone to put the parties names in hyperlinks that led to at least one fricking about page?
That said...WHAT THE FUCK PEOPLE????? What? Why? Who in the hell thought it was a good idea to turn the fricking Pi, a device designed to be cheap above all, into a fricking MEDIA CENTER? Now robotics, UAVs, remote control systems of all sorts? yeah I can see that. But looking at these things you pretty much have to massage the fuck out of your media to make it run on the thing and even then its hit or miss...why? Why would you do that?
You want an actual FUNCTIONAL media center? here you go...E350 in a nice HTPC case and there is even a free Linux HTPC build for it, couldn't be simpler. And unlike the Pi you won't spend weeks massaging the hell out of your formats, it'll play pretty much any format out of the box and only uses 18w under load and idles around 6w.
So no wonder I didn't know what this was, the thought of even attempting something so frankly pointless was simply beyond me. To use a /. car analogy this is like buying a car known for its hyper fuel efficiency and then using it to pull a boat. Sure you might get it to work for awhile but you are gonna spend more time working on the damned thing or dealing with problems than it is worth. media decoding and scaling is NOT a light task and a wimpy CPU like the Pi wasn't made for that task, not even close. Hell does it even have the broadcom decoder chip? Even if it does it'll be limited as hell for that role, it just makes no sense.
Lets see if I get modded down again like I did last time I asked this...WTF is Xbian? What does it do, what is the difference between it and the other and WTF does the other do?
All I can figure out is it has something to do with Raspberry pi from the title, which is a niche product so this is niche software that runs on a niche product...is it REALLY so much to ask for to have a fricking "about" link in TFS?
Oh lord its a FOSSie! I love how new features are fine...as long as you don't get paid because that's BAD wharrgarbl! Communism failed you know, LO is frankly years behind simply because they don't have the money to keep up. Would you like a list of huge major problems in Linux? Again nobody pays, problems don't get fixed. they get fixed in SERVER, because corps pay millions to get it fixed, see red hat becoming a billion dollar company for proof they pay, desktop no money for free so you get free crap.
And if I give you a shit sandwich for free...are you gonna thank me? because you are welcome to have my garbage if you want it, why aren't you thanking me? if your argument worked we'd all be using free OSes and nobody would buy MS Office, the fact that people steal MS Office by HUGE amounts compared to taking LO for free (last figures i saw was 8 to 1) so your entire argument? Worthless. does Apple support 9 year old versions of iWork? Nope. Does LO support 9 year old version of OO.o? And do NOT say its free, because its bloated by 300%, run OO.o 1.0 and compare its usage to the latest LO so it is NOT free, its sucking resources which I paid for, so why is it not supported?
Its not supported because it would bloat the living hell out of the program....just like...supporting versions that were replaced ages ago in MS Office. If they don't like it? welcome to take your hippy dippy free crap, the fact that they don't WANT your free crap? should smack you with the cluebat.
Moving the goalposts, I even mentioned Red hat and pointed out that SERVERS and desktops are as different as a corporate yacht and a dingy, there really is NO comparison. Corporations WILL pay for support, consumers and SMBs won't, not for a desktop, and as we have seen time and time again the GPL ends up leaving the desktop company with a "tin cup" model that makes it impossible to plan for the future.
so sorry, not talking about servers, routers, or what runs on the toaster, talking about desktops which the death of Canonical will put the final nail in the "year of the Linux desktop" myth. Oh the community won't accept it, they too will try to move the goalposts by claiming cell phones are the new desktops (horseshit) or that since the webservers are Linux that means they "won" (again horseshit, that's like routers, backend crap nobody that isn't in corp sees nor cares about) but in the end the simple fact is the GPL means you just can't make a living on the desktop, never happen.
What is gonna be really fucking scary is picture what happened with Libya, now picture it with nukes. if you think those in power will go gently into that good night, possibly facing prosecution for all the dirty deals they have been doing, then you got another thing coming.
More likely you'll see the military split in two, just as it did in Libya, with M-1 against M-1 and Apache against Apache. When, not if, when the bubble bursts you are gonna be looking at 10s of millions of people, the poor, elderly, cripples, without any way to take care of themselves because the government won't be able to pay its debts and the money will be like the Zimbabwean dollar, totally worthless. Mass rioting, looting, it'll make NO after Katrina look like Sunday in the park.
Personally, and its scary as hell just thinking about it, but I could EASILY see the USA going the route of 1933 Germany, and just deciding to take what we want, like say South America. who would stand up to the USSA? China? Tell them they are welcome to Africa and they'll bow out, Russia? Putin is ex KGB, I'm sure he'd like some of eastern EU and part of Alaska back, so who would that leave? the UK? France? as you pointed out America has an insane number of weapons, hell we have 11 aircraft carriers to the next largest nations 2 and waaay too many nuclear subs.
In any case i doubt seriously the bubble will last another decade, a few more countries in the EU fail and the whole thing will fall down like a house of cards. I'm starting to wonder if that crazy Russian economist is right, and the USA will go the way of the USSR and just break up, with small groups of states banding together instead of the big giant mess we have now.Any way you slice it its gonna be nasty and those in the EU that cheer the thought of "the end of the American empire" really ought to look at their history at what happens when highly militarized nations crumble, it ain't pretty.
He who buys into walled garden shouldn't be surprised if the view sucks.
Seriously man this IS Apple we are talking about, a company that makes Ballmer's MSFT look like the Care Bears. "Apple products" and "playing nice" are two phrases that don't go together, in fact they hate each other. Its not like any of this is a secret, its been SOP at Apple for as long as I can remember.
Friend please watch this video which explains better than i ever could why your argument just doesn't hold water. you are the peasant, they have the power of force, you have occupy, they have the police. unless your last name is Buffet or Gates you can jump and scream and vote until you are blue in the face, as another put it "Its not even Coke VS Pepsi, Coke and Pepsi compete. this is Coke VS Coke in a decorative bottle"
Uhh before you wharrgarbl you MIGHT want to see what the grandparent was talking about, specifically Excel which if you've ever dealt with Excel jockeys you'd know they ALWAYS use the most bleeding edge features, since they treat it more like an IDE than a spreadsheet.
Now is this the best way to do things? of course not but as long as we have BOFH that won't let users have an IDE but WILL let them have Excel and Access this is reality. Again we are talking about a 9 year old version, no shit its not gonna support the latest scripting and macros.
finally how does that change the fact that the same thing Apple and Linux get praised for, "cutting the cruft" and losing BC is EXACTLY what everyone is complaining about when it comes to MSFT, only with the opposite argument? MSFT is already 3 versions past 2K3 yet you expect them to backport every thing just because somebody wants to use 9+ year old software? tell me, do you think MSFT should be forced to support XP until 2020 because a few don't want to let go?
Actually what we need is to replace JavaScript. I mean Good Lord the thing was designed in an earlier and frankly more naive age, they even named it after Java because java was supposed to be the "next new thing" and they wanted to ride the buzz. It was just never designed for security and with more and more crap bolted to it to allow webapps it just gets worse every year. heck block all ads and watch the malware drop, the design just isn't very good for today's threats.
No what we need is a new language designed from the ground up for isolation and sandboxing, where ALL code is treated as totally untrusted and locked in a little box no matter what. We have browsers bolting this functionality on but honestly its turd polishing, JavaScript just wasn't meant to be in any way secure but with more and more of our banking and shopping done online we need a newer better design. Perhaps something more virtual machine like where the regular web gets locked into a sandbox with practically no permissions, and then a limited whitelist set up by the user for banks, shopping, etc that uses a completely different VMed browser instance with zero in common.
Is it just me, or does anyone else find this ironic? I mean we hear constant screams about MSFT having too much cruft and backwards compatibility holding things back yet here you are complaining that a NINE YEAR OLD version of office won't deal with the latest formats other than as a viewer. Serious dude who supports NINE year old software besides MSFT? last I checked you get 5 years on Apple, I doubt very seriously you'd get anything but word salad if you tried to open the latest LO ODF files on OO.o 1.0, if it would open at all or even install on a current Linux, yet MSFT is support software forever and still NOT have cruft and bloat?
The fact that they even gave you a compatibility pack at all was more than the other guys, so maybe if you need it that bad you might want to just pick up a copy of something from this decade, yes?
So why not keep the parts that do work and just buy the ones that need Excel 2010 a copy of Excel 2010 and call it a day?
The problem with Excel is that the Excel jockeys really push the limits when it comes to using the features so sticking with the old version doesn't really work. Word? meh I've had no problem editing and saving Word 2K10 files in Word 2k, most folks don't use any more features now than they did then. Sure they like the preview bit in 2K7 and 2K10, but that doesn't affect the final document.
With Excel on the other hand they are using every feature and then some, adding macros all over the place and using it almost as much as a programming tool as a spreadsheet. Now I understand why, its because too many companies have BOFH that lock the shit out of everything and won't let them having IDEs or DBs but what does every desktop seem to have? Excel and Access, so they use what they have. But that means that since they are really pushing it you have to keep up when it comes to those two, Excel especially.
A couple of my SMB customers had the same problem so i just got them the newest Excel and they are happy. Powerpoint works fine, Word works fine, the ones I deal with aren't big on Access (thank the FSM) so by just buying the one program that needed updating they are able to get along just fine.
I think what the guy meant is the actual scientific limits are never reached thanks to political BS, with commodities you have subsidies and protectionism and hand outs constantly distorting the market so we never get to see what is actually able to be accomplished thanks to political crap.
If that is what he meant? I have to say I agree, because the scientific method has never really been allowed to deal with crops on a large scale because of big agriculture and government being such friendly bedfellows. You get paid not to grow, or they distort the market so that one crop is worth a hell of a lot more than it should be, and that throws the science right out the window because who is gonna turn down "free" money?
But I agree 100%, with water recyclers and desalination plants and greenhouses we could probably make deserts into breadbaskets but again here comes politics, you'll get the greenies screaming about threatening some lizard and the big agri lobbyists demanding protection and soon the whole thing would be another political clusterfuck.
I was gonna say that as well, hell the POTUS just gives a flowery "LOL fuck you peasant" to any petition that doesn't follow the corporate line. I mean if online petitions to our own government, you know the people that are SUPPOSED to listen to us, are so worthless they actually created a "please stop ignoring us" petition then WTF does anybody think some techno-corp like twitter is gonna care?
Vote with your feet and walk away, that is pretty much the only things the corps notice anymore, dwindling marketshare. At least THAT we do have evidence that it works, see EA being up for sale and Ubisoft getting rid of its always online "You filthy pirate! How dare you buy our products!" worthless DRM. Corps notice when the money dries up and their marketshare takes a giant nosedive, anything else? I'm shocked they just don't tweet a picture of Goatse to the petitioners for all they'll care.
Sorry but if you think voting or even the little occupy crap can change a system where billions are changing hands? I have some magic beans you might be interested in.
I urge you watch a little video, no fancy graphics, just a little Jewish girl on a stage pointing out similarities to previous points in history titled the end of America which really nails what you WILL be seeing here in the future. oh and about voting here is another truly great video that explains with a lot of passion why it simply can't change anything.
all you can do is grab as much as you can and be ready for the fall, which is coming. We had 120% of GDP in the market before the great depression and now its at 430% and rising including everyone's retirements in the form of 401K and 403B. when this bubble bursts you are gonna see what nasty is, I'm predicting a Libya style situation as we'll be looking at 50%+ unemployment and the government and banks defaulting. Gonna be nasty, keep your head down and be ready, its all you can do now, the burst is inevitable and unstoppable.
To you and all the "I don't mind paying ACs" I have to call BULLSHIT. Do I REALLY need to list how many went tits up because rather than spend a dollar the users just jumped onto "Bob's distro" and left the devs high and dry? Mandriva, Linspire, Xandros, I could hit the wiki and fill that list out but why bother? Linux users WILL NOT PAY. Oh sure they'll throw a few more bucks to charity like the humble bundles, but actually pay for their OS? Well hell freezes over.
As i have said in the past it would cost a minimum of 100 million dollars to make linux truly competitive with Windows and OSX (If I listed all the parts that would have to be forked or replaced this would look like war & peace) but as we are seeing with Canonical its easier to squeeze blood out of a stone than get Linux users to pay for an OS. In the end free as in beer trumps all. How many of you work for free? How many of you donate your time in large quantities to do the truly shit work in Linux, like documentation, regression testing, bug fixing, QA and QC? Yeah, thought so.
This, this right here, is why FOSS as a philosophy yields more half baked incomplete software than anything else, because while everyone wants the OTHER guy to work for nothing THEY want to get paid. in a way I'd argue its the failure of communism all over again. Oh and before anybody mentions servers or Android? Google pays ONE BILLION DOLLARS for Android development and the fortune 500 companies pay hundreds of millions for Linux server development, Linux desktops? here is $3 and a candy bar. the money just isn't there and as Canonical found out you'll go broke long before you get it ready for the masses. Shuttleworth really should have went BSD, then he could have sold his OS because he could have kept his changes. How many "Ubuntu derived" distros are there? I rest my case.