The article rightly points out that today's mobile apps provide enough of a Chicken and Egg dilemma, that even Microsoft can't get it. So Canonical's trying to sidestep that by saying we don't need mobile apps at all. They have a point. The way to sidestep the Chicken and Egg problem is to kill the chicken. When iOS and Android came along, the prevailing paradigm was traditional (Windows) desktop apps. But they came just at the moment that the web had made those traditional apps unnecessary for many (most?) casual internet users. And we largely have Mozilla to thank for that - for saving the web from Microsoft's attempt to Windows-ize it. So Safari and Chrome were able to provide the same access on a new class of device, and iOS and Android were born. But now a new mobile apps paradigm has taken hold, so for mobile there's a new chicken to kill.

Canonical should be focusing on their Scopes model more than on putting out mobile devices at this point. And that probably means doing what they can to get Android developers to build to that model (Apple probably won't let them in). And it wouldn't hurt to encourage Scopes on desktops - stressing Windows, Mac, Linux and Android portability as the carrot. If enough users are centering enough of their activities around Scopes, then - and only then - the mobile paradigm might be open to a new OS player. Who knows, maybe that's what Canonical is really doing here - putting out a proof of concept device, and introducing a new dev paradigm. But if that's the case, they need to stress that Scopes isn't just a Canonical thing.

Of course, the real problem is the moronic US public that knows the climate change deniers are lying, but repeats their lies because... Obama!

We think we're so far above the tribal idiocy of Shiite vs. Sunni, and yeah, we don't go around beheading our enemies, but we are becoming just as much an 'us vs. them' society.

Okay. So what do you do when you already have shown the opposing arguments to be false, and they keep making them. And then they resort to defaming your character, since they can't really counter your science. Some societies will go for a strict free speech approach that allows the liar to keep on lying and hopes that the effects won't be too bad. Other societies decide to put limits on how long you can keep spreading lies publicly. You may decide to think of this as censorship, but certainly there are degrees. Canada's certainly not coming down on the side of suppressing facts here... The US errs on the side of letting rich guys pay to spread lies. Which is the better approach?

Whose crap is on your iPhone or WinPhone? At least Android lets you sideload alternatives. Seriously, if you use a search engine, they're logging your searches. If you use a free email system, they're logging your emails. I guess Firefox private mode might help you when searching - if you don't trust Chrome's incognito...

If they reproduce asexually, then evolution has to count only on random mutations and copying errors. Sexual reproduction intentionally mixes up the genes so you get new combinations all the time. Evolution based on random mutations that still produce a viable organism is closer to monkeys at typewriters.

Well, maybe the home PC is dying then. I have both Windows 7 and Linux Mint on my home PC. I never even boot Windows 7 - though my partner uses it to fill his ipod. And when I work from home, I use remote desktop from my Mint system to get to my office PC. As long as you can get to your corporate VPN (big if - it took some doing for me to get it to work), even Chromebooks can do that.

And a lot of companies virtualizing Windows desktops would love to replace most of the traditional desktop software they use with web based stuff. They don't like the cost and hassle of maintaining virtualized Windows environments for their users, they're just locked in to Windows-only software - for now... There's still a market for content creation, gaming, etc, that needs lots of dedicated desktop computing power - but it's a shrinking market (except maybe the gaming part - but consoles handle much of that).

I think the iPhone was successful before they supported 3rd party apps. They already had the entertainment basics built in - which at the time meant playing your iTunes collection on your phone. But yeah, 3rd party apps are what prevented Microsoft from copying the iPhone and stealing the business. Apple won that one by playing one of Microsoft's games - lock in the developers and let them sell your system for you.

Microsoft tried to use Windows 8 to do that. They were able to count on selling Windows 8 to new PC buyers - and they figured that would get the deveopers back from Apple. Hasn't worked out, though. The desktop didn't need new phone apps.

In fact, other than the apps that are already there, desktops today may as well be Chromebooks. That's why Mac sales are also booming. Most home PC users are just using them for the web, email and streaming video. PC's, Macs and Chromebooks do all of these equally well. PC's still win for users that need 3rd party apps - and for gamers. Macs are fine if the particular 3rd party apps you need happen to be there. And even Linux is fine if the only 3rd party app you need is Office - and you find LibreOffice compatibility good enough for your needs.

For everybody else, Chromebooks get the job done. Even if many Slashdotters can't wrap their minds around that, Microsoft can. That's why they're trying to kill off Chromebooks with an equivalent stripped-down Windows platform. Not sure if it even matters any more, though, since it's the change in how PCs are used, not the specific competitor, that's changed the landscape.

It's not that Microsoft overlooked the entertainment part of the market. Microsoft routinely 'overlooked' all parts of the market when those parts were in their early stages.

Prior to the iPod, they were able to get away with letting everybody else figure out what the new areas of personal computing were going to be. Then they picked the already established winners and used their monopoly tying power to overcome them. It worked for integrated dev tools. It worked for office software. It even mostly worked for web browsers. It didn't work for the iPod, because there was nothing that Microsoft could use to tie their late-to-market Zune players to. Apple made an appealing product, and they won the market. Plus, most iPod users were tied by their music collections to Apple.

And the iPod begat the iPhone - which was too complex for Microsoft to play quick-enough catch up and use, say, 'real IE' or exclusive connectivity to exchange to succeed. In fact, the success of the iPhone and iPad killed IE as a selling point by solidifying the notion that web sites had better not be IE specific if they wanted to get the hits. Once exchange connectivity and good enough MSOffice viewers became available on iOS and Android, the window of opportunity closed.

Every web site you log into on your iPhone does the same thing that it does when you log into it from your Android phone. Every major search engine sells targeted advertising based on what it knows about you - which is the only 'you' Google (or Bing, for that matter) sells to everyone. They DO NOT sell the information. But in any case, if you don't use the major search engines, or log into Google services, you have the same freedom from Google tracking on Apple or Android. It's not as if the services on an iPhone don't track you - just because Apple's not the one doing the tracking...

True. But how vital is the specific kernel version to the upgrade from, say, Kit-Kat to Jellybean? Google goes with a new kernel for support for new devices - and to otherwise keep up-to-date. But couldn't the AOSP source code to Kit-Kat or Lollipop be built against the kernel used in Jellybean to get a CM ROM that has all the features of the latest Android - but works on otherwise abandoned hardware, using the binary drivers that were produced for that hardware.

There might even be a cash business for such a service. OEM's abandoned your otherwise viable device? Pay us 10 bucks and we'll upgrade you. Beats having to buy a new phone.

"Linux has won" means that Microsoft has lost the ability to force you to use Windows - just because their apps required it. Linux doesn't need to be on a majority of desktops to have won in that sense. What has been "won" is your ability to use Linux without having to lose certain important functionality that was locked up in Microsoft monopolies.

The problem with "The dems raise as much money as republicans" is that, either way, the election becomes about the issues that moneyed donors care about - and almost nothing else. I believe Obama raised more money through smaller donations than Romney did, but even if not - he didn't appoint the Citizen's United faction to the SCOTUS.

Money in politics is a problem - whether it favors one side or not. And it sure seems like the right wing of the SCOTUS thinks it favors their side - because political money is bribery as much as it's speech. And one-person-one-vote democracy doesn't work with one billionaire $100 million worth of speech vs 1 normal voter, 10 bucks.

The indictment applies equally to all those other corporations as well. If you know of examples, make them public. But Apple - as the most profitable of the bunch - has a higher profile. Sorry if that affects their public relations. Walmart is hated for a lot of the stuff it does too. Is Target any better - possibly, but probably not by a lot. But Walmart gets all the 'biggest retailer in the world' publicity, so they bear the brunt of criticism of what all the 'biggest retailers' do.

No companies should be allowed to pull this shit. So excusing Apple for doing what they all do is kind of disingenuous. Why not instead indict the government for allowing it. Even if you think taxes are too high, the appropriate response to that is to try to lower rates - not to enable dodges.

You may not think the web is the future for business apps, but let me tell you - as an employee at a company that's in the process of rewriting some huge fat-client apps for the web, it is. Not for everything, of course. Nobody's going to do video production in a web app. But just about any database-centric app will work better as a web app than as a fat client desktop app - without the support nightmares that desktop apps bring to the mix.

And saying that RT has desktop mode is willfully ignoring my point. It doesn't have desktop mode for 3rd party developers - and the lock-in of 3rd party developers to WIN32 API's is the only reason Windows remains so successful. I maintain one of those apps, and i'd be glad to port it to WIN32 ARM, but MS won't let me. The last thing I want to do is rewrite it for Metro. I'd much rather rewrite it as a web app. Of course, WIN32 isn't going anywhere, so I'm not going to have to rewrite it at all...

Like I said, only the MS lapdog sector of the tech media ever believed that Metro was going to replace WIN32. That's not to say Metro might not be better than WIN32, but MS of all companies ought to know that installed base and backward compatibility trumps new and better every time.

Right. So like I said, you're just looking for a vaguely political story onto which to dump your...