This was one of the biggest problems in my opinion. Facebook, when it was in it's "beta stage" was exclusive only to university students, which was fine because many of a university student's friends are also university students. Google in their infinite wisdom decided that only certain people were allowed to use Google+ in the beginning, and there wasn't a specific demographic allowed to use it. So I could join, but none of my friends could until they got invited, by which point their fleeting interest had turned to distain, and they saw no reason to not leave Facebook, which had already accepted them. Google+ was basically an elitist product that only the fortunate few could access.

Google tried to treat it's social network like it's email service, which would be fine, but even when Gmail was invite-only, I could still send email to people that didn't have access.

There's no technical or mysterious reason why Google+ is falling over, Google screwed up their release strategy catastrophically. Even Microsoft weren't dumb enough to create an invite-only social network.

Incidentally, you could swap "Google+" for "Diaspora" and get the same story.

Never underestimate the number of people with excess cash that see the iPhone as more of a status symbol than a gadget.

What Mozilla need to do to retain their rapidly shrinking corporate userbase is consider releasing LTS releases. By all means, they can do the 5 week release cycle if they want, but they should work towards an LTS release every quarter or six months, which should provide IT departments enough time to test the release. LTS releases would give companies an assurance of stability with the Firefox product. As it stands at the moment, their desire to have a version number pissing contest with Google and Chrome is making them look unstable, unsure of themselves, and undesirable. Inevitably, it will probably result in many companies returning to Internet Explorer on Windows.

It's never lucus.

Whoosh!

I find it very strange as well. My university (although I'm in the UK) had a number of dedicated Linux computer labs, in fact probably outweighing Windows 6-4. They all ran RHEL, and all of my first year courses were taught using Linux, it wasn't until second and final year where we dabbled with things like .NET and used Windows for programming.

In my opinion I think that a significant exposure to a Linux environment should be compulsory for anyone taking a CS degree, in the same way that an artist should be exposed to both water colours and charcoal when learning to paint. Knowing one without the other can severely hinder career progression, since your toolbox is missing a rather important tool.

That being said, my University was less helpful in getting Linux PCs connected to the network. It was obviously supported, since all the CS labs were connected to the campus network, but they provided no support for it if you wanted to connect your Linux laptop (full connection guides were provided for people with Windows and Mac OSX), and it was a case of figuring it out for yourself using the Windows/Mac manual, replacing keywords where required.

My document archiving works like this:

1. 1. Document is placed in my in tray (yes, I have an in tray at home) if it requires dealing with. Bills for example all get put in my in tray so that I remember to pay them. This step is skipped if the document is reference only (acknowledgement letters, signed contracts, etc).
2. 2. The document is placed in the "black file", which is a catagorised file of documents. The document is also scanned to a PDF and stored on my PC (and backed up)
3. 3. The document lives in the black file until it is no longer relevant (for bills, a year, contracts stay until they expire, etc), at which point it is shredded, but the digital copy is kept permanently.

This works well for me, but obviously ymmv. Keeping documents digitized also keeps them in easy reach and means I only need a small file to keep important documents since older ones are all stored electronically.

Many moons ago, the exact same thing was said about Quad Core CPUs on desktops too. We have uses for quad core on the desktop now, but around the time Core 2 Quad was released, there was little use for them. It's very much a case of "build it, and they will come". If hardware provides four cores, it will get used. Maybe not immediately, but soon enough in the near future.

Maybe they're not holding it right?

Amen to this. I am all for "Free as in Speech", and when I do release my own software, its generally under a licence that promotes this. At the end of the day though, I'm a professional software developer, and I need to be paid for my work in order to keep providing for myself and (eventually) my family. Its all well and good saying otherwise, but the people that do say otherwise generally have other means of income. I create good software, regardless of whether I'm being paid for it or not, but I can't live for free, which is exactly why I can't work for free.

Forgive my ignorance. They don't host ads, they don't charge subscription fees, they don't sell your information, you don't buy anything from them. Where is the business model with this? All I see is a website giving a free service and not seemingly covering their own costs.