Having the batteries centralized like in the Tesla is a GOOD thing. They keep the center of gravity low on the car making it almost impossible to roll (seriously, the NHTSA had to specially design a scenario to get it to roll) and they make it possible to swap batteries for a quick charge which is going to be necessary unless the capacity of batteries can be increased by a factor of 10 with charge speeds doubled or tripled.

This is a step backwards in many ways not to mention the least of which is to necessarily increase the cost of mild accidents to replace the battery integrated pieces.

I've _never_ seen a mid-sized business using that kind of a model. Not even close. Not saying there might not be some out there, but all the ones I've seen have requirements for most of their employees that just wouldn't work with all Chromebooks.

This is a bit of an overblown notion.

The need for system admins isn't going away anytime soon. The only thing that might go away are heavily specialized admins that don't diversify. Hint: if your resume title is "Notes Admin" then yeah, you are working on borrowed time.

There is still longevity in system admins for those that have diverse skill sets. Just browse job listings and you'll see it -- qualification listings are getting longer and longer. This DOES mean, however, that the number of admin positions that could be open at any one particular time is probably not growing as fast as other jobs.

What I personally have noticed is that the mid-range jobs have just about dried up. Companies either want someone fresh out of college that will work long hours for peanuts or they want seasoned experts that are worth the money. Maybe it was this way before the dot com era, but that's when I hit the workforce, so I only know how things were from then to now.

Canonical is making the gamble that the future of Linux desktop computing as a major platform, if there is one, will be in the mobile space via convergence (i.e. use your phone as a desktop on occasion by hooking it to a keyboard/mouse/monitor). If they can pull off a great phone experience that offers a compelling Android/iPhone alternative, it's a win for them. Even if not a single user decides to use it as a desktop and only as a phone, it's a win for them. It will offer Canonical a potentially sizable revenue stream they've never had before.

That being said, their intent, as I understand it, is to make neither mobile nor desktop second class citizens -- to put them on the same level playing field. Whether they achieve this lofty goal remains to be seen.

It's been a long time since I took a look at it, but it's been around quite a while. I don't see it in your list, so it's probably worth you at least checking it out.

I've said it before -- their campaign (on Indiegogo by the way, not Kickstarter) was an abject clinic in how not to do an online campaign. They did just about everything in exactly the worst way to ensure success. The miracle story of that campaign was how much money they got despite their (many) missteps.

It's not just time -- it's whether or not their mobile gambit pays off. If, as Canonical has wagered, mobile continues to become the central and often only computing device for people, mobile processing/graphics power moves forward a few notches and their Mir efforts hit pay-dirt, then they will not decline but rather become THE undisputed non-Android Linux platform.

If any single one of those things fails to happen in the next 2 years, they're history. Plain and simple unless they recognize early enough and steer the ship back into standard desktop waters.

You're going to have to go beyond marketing for this. Microsoft set out with Windows 8 to try to do a convergent experience between devices. Their failure to do this isn't marketing's fault. Whether marketing failed to listen after everyone realized they failed or whether development bothered to tell them is really the question.

I don't think it's fair to judge the failure of the Edge campaign as "people didn't want it".

I would have bought one or two if I had enough time to save up the money for it. Forking out $700 or $1400 (for two) on a whim isn't something I'm willing to do since I follow a budget. 30 days notice to do so isn't enough time. If there had been sufficient warning of at least two months BEFORE the start of the campaign, I'm betting others besides myself could have saved up the money to buy one.

Also, there was speculation about whether requiring people to have a Paypal account caused some people not to pledge for one. It's reasonable to suspect at least some people fit in this category.

Lastly the Edge campaign was an absolute clinic in how NOT to do pricing perks. It would probably take three or four large paragraphs to explain the situation, but to say that it was convoluted and unhelpful would be an understatement. They eventually settled on a single (and attractive) price point which is what they should have had from the beginning.

Well, it's probably because of something like this which makes it look like Red Hat possibly trying to influence a partner to put a competitor at a disadvantage:

http://www.muktware.com/5872/intel-red-hat-working-enabling-wayland-support-gnome

That's terribly inaccurate. Creative minds long ago figured out how to get personal benefit without making it personal income. Large companies have people whose sole job is to find ways to minimize tax liability. Eliminate corporate taxes and these folks won't be fired -- they'll be reassigned to spend all day every day to come up with even more elaborate ways to benefit management without having it be personal income.

"Not being a prime directive" and "not being able to do it" aren't the same things. If you're trying to squeeze every ounce of performance out of a mobile device, which Canonical does want to do in order to support convergence, then you WANT your compositor to be designed from the ground up with mobile in mind. It may well be that even given this Wayland is the better choice due to better design. Time will tell.

BFD

If other distros offer a better product with the help of Wayland, then they'll have no problem stealing market share. Linux users tend to be savvy such that they can switch distros if compelled to do so.

By statistical modeling correlated to rising CO2 that shows trend lines antithetical to Global Warming modeling predictions. You'll need a large data sampling to reduce sensitivity to individual weather events. There's a reason such statistical modeling hasn't been done yet -- the data doesn't correlate antithetically to Global Warming models.

That infinitesimally small number of scientists that aren't part of the "consensus" by and large don't disagree with the data, just the cause.

It's more like Canonical looking at the progress and direction of Wayland and saying, "we don't feel this product is going to be sufficient for our near term mobile goals and would rather roll our own to ensure product delivery"

Whether or not they were correct in this thinking is possibly open for debate. There's certainly been some things they've said publicly that were debunked, but that doesn't mean the core of their premise is wrong. They are moving to a mobile strategy that AFAIK just isn't a prime directive of Wayland, but I'm not well versed in all that is Wayland so maybe someone that is can clear that up.

The petty bickering is Wayland devs and fans getting butt hurt about some things Canonical has said publicly some of which has been proven wrong as I said above. Since then, it's been a cacophony of rants from the Wayland devs/fans with general Canonical/Ubuntu haters thrown in bashing on Canonical/Ubuntu/Mir/Unity at every opportunity.

I've just started tuning it out waiting to see how it all turns out. If there's room for more than one IDE, I don't see why there can't be room for more than one compositor. May the best product win where "win" is defined as the most market share.

Climate models have long said that as we trend towards very bad extremes (high temperature, low sea ice and melting glaciers) that you WILL see wild intra-value swings with higher frequency of those swings happening.

Adding a single event into a pile of extreme weather/climate conditions makes sense. But to say "Aha! See the ice went way up this year, so how does that fit into your theory?" is silly. It fits nicely with the wild swings mentioned above. If the theory holds true then you'll see record lows yet again in a year or two. Followed by possible another year of "60% ice growth ZOMG AGW isn't real!" but again -- it fits the pattern.

This isn't to say that every extreme weather event fits like a glove into this mold. It's just to say that when you get extremely unusual weather events of colossal size every year (like we've been seeing) and wild statistical swings in any one direction, then it gets easier to explain.

BUT -- and this is size 600 font "but" -- you have to watch the trend lines over the years to understand where things are headed. The recent (i.e. 100 year) trend lines are all headed to very bad places. Even worse -- the only surprise in the trend lines has been how quickly they're happening.