Only a year of two until Canonical shuts down then. They're not making any money, They're unlikely to make any money and generally people don't want an Ubuntu based anything.

Their server support business is lacklustre (Redhat, Novell, IBM and Oracle eat their lunch) and not enough to support a business.

It's hard to call Canonical a successful company - it's only still around because of its unique financial status.

The hardware Ubuntu phone OS needs is not low end. They might have had a chance with low-end phones, but the OS is too heavy and doesn't offer enough compelling reasons to use it. With so much abstraction, it's sure to be buggy as well.

Like Ubuntu TV, Edge, Unity and Mir this is going nowhere. Their hardware "partner" will load a few hundred phones with Ubuntu, they'll also sell Android Phones with the exact same hardware. It doesn't cost them anything, if they don't sell - the manufacturer will just reflash them.

>The colour scheme hurts my eyes - it's too shiny.

>The condensed comments are gone.

>So much waster space, the padding on everything is too big, margins are uselessly large. As the user scrolls down, the comment boxes get to ridiculously small proportions.

> There is no reply button. Are you trying to reduce discussion?

If you're trying to underemphasis the comments (the only worthwhile thing here) you're going to have to do better editorial work. Hacker News posts articles weeks before you do.

When teaching algebra, include a coding unit that shows the relationship between the two. This should cover the flow controls and functions. Teach first order logic as well. It will make sharpen their analytic skills and make them better citizens.

Who's going to teach it though? Over the years the teaching profession has been eroded to mediocrity, with low entry standards and BS union ideological wars

For the most part i spend my time in browser, terminal, pdf reader, word processor and occasionally a dedicated IDE.

All i really want in a UI is the ability to switch between these apps without having to mentally switch contexts. On a non-touch computer, a menu list of installed apps+taskbar with a stacking window manager is ideal.

Linux users are not the only ones who are rejecting the new UIs. Everyone hates how windows 8 works.

There is clearly a need for new UIs for touch based machines. The mistake is trying to create one UI that works for both worlds - this is the mistake Win8 and GNOME3 made.

IE is shit, It also makes them no money and offers little advantage. It was considered necessary in the 90's to counter a possible threat to the desktop (mainly java and Netscape).

By making their browser free they killed netscape and limited the browser as a platform for their competitors. It also removed any incentive MS had to innovate in the area.

It took Mozilla, a very odd organisation, a NFP organisation based around software that uses Open-Source as a way to reduce the limitations that traditional software houses encounter (I.E. making money) to break the stagnation.

The world has moved on, ways to compete with free have emerged and the desktop market has cemented, mobile platforms are a big stake and MS has a very minor piece of it.

MS should take chromium, add their own stuff (MS accounts, Bing, Outlook.com and other "value added" stuff) and ship it with windows. It works for Google. it would likely slow (perhaps stop) the migration to chrome .

Come to think of it, they should do the same thing with android too.

Anna Karenina is easily the best book I've read. It's fairly dense though. The book is the epitome of realist fiction (basically the characters sweat if it's hot) and on each reading you get something different from it.

Tolstoy was an interesting and thoughtful man and wrote a lot of good stuff.

Also, on a side note, don't read if you don't enjoy it. There's nothing particularly beneficial about reading. Historically literacy was a sign of education and the association has remained. Reading is a very slow activity and requires full attention - If you can extract a story or info from another (more forgiving) medium, why not?

The reason they can't just drop the charges and offer regret is mainly political.

Turing was in violation of the law at the time. The law was definitely unjust, but he was in violation of it.

Dropping the charges or showing remorse would open up a can of worms regarding liability. Doing so would create precedent and a mechanism for descendants to air grievances over historical wrong doings - it will never end and may be costly.

Practically, this is the best they will ever dare do.

I'm sure he still maintains some interest in KDE and reads the tech news..chances are he saw the initial brouhaha regarding his absence and ignored it.

Way to embarrass him...this whole adventure, from beginning to end, reeks of a serious lack of basic communication and social skills.

Stating something "looks Chinese" is not racist in any way. It's what you extrapolated in your mind that's racist.

I'm not sure if it's me projecting things but do those rockets and robots _look_ Chinese to anyone else? How it that possible?

Society is probably better off teaching kids first order logic. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-order_logic

Not only will it help them sharpen their analytically skills (Making it easier for them to do, well, anything) it will also sharpen their BS-metre making them better citizens.

Schools should just teach math better, an intermediate high-school senior level maths course is much more challenging than most programming tasks. HS maths should incorporate a programming module in their algebra lessons, exposing teens to the basic control flows found in any language (and how to manipulate numbers and expressions with them) will make it easier for a student to learn a certain type of programming _if_ they need to.

I'm not impressed with these online programming classes, everything is placed in wrappers and the student just plugs things in.

Old people (and non-techie people) are not stupid. I used to make the mistake of thinking i had to simplify everything to just "one big button" for them as well.

Often times when you try to simplify GUIs you end up adding layers that make things more complicated when they break or the user wants to perform an atypical task.

Buy an ipad, it's intuitive, it's what everyone has - other people can help him with it.

Although Ironically, It literally has "one big button".

What kind of upgrade path is their from FTTN to FTTH? After some googling, all the articles/discussion I've seen about this are marred with political ideology.

If paying for FTTN and then FTTH is individually cheaper then going straight to FTTH (even if the total is more expensive) it may be easier for a future government to sell as prudent policy.

Government finances work differently to normal finances, when you're guaranteed a certain level of tax income, two smaller payment (over a period of time) that sum up to be larger than one big payment can be regarded as easier on the budget and easier to sell politically - most people care about short term costs.

Another reason for keeping xp is that they very likely have the xp code audited and custom patched to their liking.