Exactly - I make the car analogy. I love my car despite the fact that it's not great at anything - I love it because it's good at just about everything. So just because I can't tow a houseboat doesn't make my car bad - I don't need to tow a houseboat; very few people need to tow houseboats! Very few people need NVidia Quadro cards, and NOBODY needs them to surf the web, email, or write papers and use a spreadsheet.

Ditto - I got a small-ish GE (with turn table and everything) around 1988, and only replaced it a few years ago with a larger, newer version because my now wife was whining about it. It was still running just fine.

Agreed... an Ubuntu phone will not succeed. There will be very few apps for it... even if this convergence works (and I use Ubuntu as my desktop), it needs to function as a smart phone, which means it can't just be useful when docked as a desktop. I just don't see developers rushing to develop for it. It will only serve to be a proof of concept. At the same time, I surely don't want an MS based phone, but at least they have some app market share.

Because if you think they're describing the same OS on multiple platforms, you've completely missed the point.

Yes... exactly, just like the smartphone itself (Consumer Reports, for example, rates NONE of the current smart phones as have very good or excellent voice quality). People want this. Most people don't need high powered 3D gaming platforms, number crunching, or to be able to recompile a kernel, or do anything but the most simple video and photo editing. My current phone is so slow, I wouldn't possibly want it to act as my desktop - but in the future, new hardware, full desktop use (keyboard and mouse on a large screen), then it would make no difference.

I think that's very shortsighted. If you get what you want in a phone... all the things you want, that great, small, portable device that can do so much for you while your away from your desk... AND not have to buy a desktop or laptop, because when you dock it to something like a large screen, all the features of those applications you'd have on a desktop become available, then who wouldn't want that? I think the vast majority of users would love that - developers and games, not so much, but the rest of the world that just surfs, emails, youtubes, and does simple office apps... yes, I think they'd want that. Surely, as a parent, I'd love to be able to get my kids one thing to go to college instead of two or three.

Maybe not phones, but tablets are already doing this, and I don't think phones are that far behind. I think it'll be less than 10 years. I'm actually looking right now to replace my "portable workstation" with a dockable tablet. Some of my programming includes GUIs, so remote development hasn't really been all that feasible. If the phone can dock to something with large screen, keyboard, and mouse, and if it's still works great as a smartphone, then why not?

No, it's not that black and white. Killing terrorists, especially like this where people are deliberately setting up a situation where they draw out people with these views, is a brilliant way to make more terrorists.

Just a simple organised flag burning should do the trick.

It's not people making generalizations, it's scientific evidence; years of study show that people under the age of 25 largely do not fully grasp the consequences of their actions. Congratulations on being a statistical outlier... it doesn't change the point made.

No, just your average person... the description of the crime fits that narrative. Perhaps you were a genius who understood there were consequences to your actions - science has shown us that's not typical of the under-25 crowd.

So... congratulations on taking the comment completely the wrong way.

No, that's not what I said, but thanks for trying. Arrested and executed are functions of government, the government cannot limit your freedom of speech. Getting fired from a private corporation (which is not even what happened, but I'll play along) is not a violation of free speech.

I'm only saying that the complaint is about hypocrisy; the public outcry against someone "defending traditional marriage" dwarfs the public outcry against someone supporting same sex marriage (despite popular support in the U.S. being roughly equal), when the fact of the matter is people should just shrug and move on. For the record, I'm not arguing on this guy's behalf because I'm against same sex marriage - I'm not, I really don't care (and as such you could put me in the "supports" category), I just agree with the opinion that the public outcry is hypocritical.

I agree... he did not lose his freedom of speech at all; freedom of speech != freedom from any and all ramifications. However, I think the point Anonymous Coward was making is that if it were reversed, and someone lost their job for supporting same sex marriage, you'd never hear the end of it.

and, and, and... and the cell companies have to build in rural areas, the cost of which gets subsidized by customers in more densely populated areas. One reason the U.S. will never have the fastest/best/cheapest internet or cell phone service (on average).