Users have always had the ability to run apps in their home directory that *run with user privileges*. As this stands, there's nothing to stop a script installing a daemon that runs as root with a known exploit and running that exploit. If the application is within the user's home directory, there's no chance of it having privileges beyond that of the user in a properly configured system.

I've switched from Fedora to Ubuntu recently just because of various small things that add up. Synaptic has a much nicer feel to it than package-kit for me at this point, and PPAs are a brilliant system for keeping apps up to date over a single release cycle or testing out new applications - I'd love to see a Fedora equivalent if there is one. I also find following developer releases more pleasant with Ubuntu, having used Karmic a couple of months before release.

Fedora does somehow give me a nicer feeling than Ubuntu, perhaps since Core 3 was my first full time Linux distro, so I'd welcome any arguments to get me to switch back! I do appreciate the tech orientated development and user communities, and its out of the box experience is far more professional than many other distros in most areas.

I think this is an understatement - it's a dangerous ruling since if prisons exists as an example to others then those most genetically predisposed to killing will have less of a deterrent and be even more likely to kill if gene tests become as common as many predict.

You seem to have quite an optimistic view on the benefits of software licensing. While I do think the consumer would benefit from a more open OS X licensing model, I'm not sure Apple would benefit:

1) If Apple enters an all software market, they lose a major selling point of their hardware and enter an area with more competition and a lower barrier to entry (see: Linux). OEM licensing could potentially be more profitable, but I'm unconvinced that the market for OS X is much bigger than the market for Macs - users, particularly businesses, are often held back by software requirements rather than by the price premium.

2) Apple likes dictating what hardware you purchase - cheaper, more standard tower blocks don't fit with its image as being refined and premium, and the netbook market has far lower margins than they currently reap on MacBooks. One MacBook purchaser could well bring more profit than 5-mac-netbook purchasers. Apple doesn't want to enter a race to the bottom - they make plenty of money through brands that are seen as higher quality.

3) Why? It gives them higher margins and it's unclear whether the market share increase would offset that.

Most importantly, in my opinion:

4) Apple is so profitable because they have created their own "premium computer" market that is far larger than anything held by Alienware or Dell's Adamo. They do this by creating products that appear relatively unique and are functionally different from competitors' equivalents thanks to unique software, design and minor features (such as battery life on their laptops). Without OS X, a Macbook is just another expensive laptop. There is also some level of positive feedback - unique hardware makes the software appear higher quality, which makes the hardware seem more unique etc - and some of the major selling points depend on hardware-software integration.

I'm not saying it isn't possible that Apple would benefit from opening up their software, but it's far from being certain.

And I quote from the link you posted: "Upgrade your Mac with the latest versions of your Apple software — all in one box" Apple sells computers with disks licensed only for that computer, which won't work even on other Macs of different configurations. The only OS X copies you can purchase on their own are upgrades.

The Core 2 Duos that will provide perfectly adequate battery life are fine for gaming - no games can really take advantage of four cars, and few are particularly CPU bound in the first place. The issue there is GPU power, and there's simply no way to come close to a desktop, regardless of budget, in that department. In that sense, you have to accept sacrifices and go for a decent mobile chip, and there's no point throwing four i7 cars at something like that. Even then you could buy a good laptop (with moderate gaming capabilities) and a gaming rig for a similar price, and cover all your bases.

The article doesn't seem to suggest that this will really be enough to bring quad core laptops out of their current niche - we're talking an expensive machine which will clock in a bit over 3 hours battery life if you don't use its power, and potentially under an hour if you do. This would presumably be even worse with the higher clocked chip mentioned. I just don't feel there's much demand for such portable workstations - I can't see a good case for doing anything that processor intensive on the go. What does look very interesting is the 32nm dual core version - if they can carry over a comparable power consumption improvement to what they've achieved at the quad-core level that could be a very fast, very power efficient machine.

I don't believe it's reasonable to expect all papers to be funded by advertisers. Things like investigative journalism, sending journalists to press conferences, researched opinion pieces and the like *are* expensive, and somebody needs to fund them. Free (gratis not libre) press only exists because of the paid press and the likes of the AP/Reuters who do the initial research. People definitely pay for a higher quality of news coverage online - look at Bloomberg. Granted that's a niche, but I personally would be willing to pay a reasonable amount (less than the cost of a daily newspaper) for better, more up to date news coverage with more insightful editorials.

Ploughing waste back into the land or leaving it to decompose is hardly wasting anything - it's a natural fertiliser and reduces the need for less sustainable artificial fertilizers. Creating artificial nitrate fertilizers often involves using huge amounts of fossil fuels to extract nitrogen from the atmosphere, and many other minerals are mined unsustainably and in a highly environmentally destructive manner.

Snow Leopards adds no significant (home-)user visible changes - most of the changes are architectural and under the hood, aimed at developers. You won't get developers using features that most users don't have, so you can't sell a platform based on developer potential alone.

Apple has recognised this and priced Snow Leopard to tempt developers, so that they can use the same base in future OSes (Open CL, 64-bit, full Cocoa etc). On the other hand, Vista is that new base and MS doesn't really care if you develop for Vista or 7, although you could argue they should've priced Vista more competitively.

Oh, and you seem to be neglecting the fact that Snow Leopard is only that cheap for Leopard users - Tiger users need to shell out $169 for iWork, iLife and Snow Leopard. And let's not forget that Apple uses software to sell hardware - users will upgrade to Snow Leopard then realise they need a 64-bit processor (so no first-gen Intels) and a recent graphics processor (last couple of years) to take advantage of the most of the improvements. PowerPC users will also need to buy a whole new PC to use the new OS.

MS' pricing may not be as low as we may have hoped, but let's not paint Apple as the angel it clearly isn't.

While I'd agree that linux has started to make an impact on mobile devices, thanks primarily to its non /GNU implementation in Android, it's clearly not the only thing keeping ARM alive (apologies for the wikipedia link, the sources seem to check out). While their profit/unit may be low, they've got £50 million net income, 1,500 employees and and have shipped 10 billion devices including 98% of phones. Linux may be a growing market, but suggesting it's keeping them afloat is ludicrous.

This is a strawman - nowhere did I claim that firefox would perform at the desired speed on any piece of hardware, and I'm sure there are some netbooks on which its performance leaves something to be desired. However, that remains only a minute proportion of total computer ownership. If it's specifically the implication that netbooks are indecent that offends you, then replace "decent PC" with "the majority of personal computers or notebook purchased within the last 3 years at a cost of $500 or greater".

I'm sorry, but without any benchmark or other reasonable test there's no way of ranking the browsers in terms of general speed. I personally find firefox 3.5 faster than IE8 - I don't know if that's because I'm using XP, because that's the result I want to see or any other reason; the point is it's a subjective evaluation. Furthermore, adblock with a reasonable filter list and flasblock improve page load times and responsiveness substantially. The private browsing issue is reasonable, although I've not personally been troubled by it having no real need to combine "private" and less private browsing. I also feel the clear recent history function mitigates that to some extent.

CNet show firefox being substantially faster as of March in terms of browser performance. Admittedly firefox is a dog to start up, but that's one of the major goals for 3.6 last I checked. Having used the betas for a while, it's been a long time since I've felt I'm waiting on my browser as I did in versions 3 and particularly 2. I don't think anyone with a decent PC is going to be frustrated by the performance on 3.5, and with additional improvements already underway in trunk I don't think firefox is in any way falling behind. Oh, and how is private browsing broken in 3.5?

I still don't understand the obsession with Acid tests - they measure performance in incredibly obscure areas and have a comparatively small bearing on real world performance. Webkit and Opera in particular have designed to the test to an extent, resulting in good scores but not necessarily comparable general compliance. I'm also slightly confused by the use of the word "still" - none of these bugs are severe enough to risk breakage leading up to a release candidate. I believe far more relevant are performance, bug fixes, features and HTML5/CSS3 support (which make far more of a contribution to moving the web on that Acid Test scores do) - areas in which Firefox 3.5 has improved dramatically. Talk about focusing on the negatives...