Soo.... Now The NSA can get into our quantum computers too. YAY!

LOL. You think Obama reads those?

That's fine. You don't see my silver and Bitcoins, and also fuck you. These corporate butt-plugs have been illegitimate fascists since they murdered JFK, and Obama is no better, if anything he might be the worst of the lot.

Come on in, the water's fine! I'd avoid the whole red hat gnome mess (which includes Ubuntu, btw). Go straight debian, or if you want something easier/prettier, got Linux Mint, and in particular the xfce edition.

My larger point is that this is becoming the exception rather than the rule. And I addressed gaming directly. Steam is a huge part of the gaming market, and it's on Linux now, with titles being added almost daily. Then of course, all the nintendo emulators work great in linux... :)

Microsoft should be scared shitless. I've done ONE test install of Windows 8, HATED it. I've been installing Linux Mint xfce edition (x64) all OVER the place. Love it. Same functionality as XP, more stable, quicker boot, better software selection out of box.

The ONLY problem with mint atm is that skype is not quite as good (go figure). If google steps up the game and gets google hangouts as good or better than skype and/or gotomeeting (the screen sharing in google is totally unusable right now), I don't see Microsoft as having a chance at all in any market.

At least not amongst the IT educated who see all the other options.

And Mac? How can any shop justify the pricing? LOL

Our sysadmins are all on nagios/android now with anag in particular. Most of us aren't even using linux except when we're doing the actual installs. Everything is android now. And the prices keep dropping.

It's game over. Microsoft and Apple are done, and I'm not going to miss them at all. Corporate scum bags should've been put out of their misery years ago. Especially apple with their drm crap. When I explain to apple users how they've been screwed by apple.... Which is not hard to do, they relook at my jellybean phone and tablet, realize that both of them TOGETHER are cheaper than an iphone, and instantly vow never to buy apple again.

I don't know a single person who has any feelings about Windows 8 other than abject hatred. NOBODY is switching to that here. Even on calls where a client got a new machine, their question is always, "How can I downgrade?" For the majority of them (non-gamers in particular), I convince them to use Mint xfce edition, and they couldn't be happier. Now with Steam growing it's library on Linux? The gamers are next. As soon as Civilization 2 comes to steam, I won't even need my old microXP VM any more!

These are good times for Linux, for open source, for human freedom, and for the tech industry. I for one welcome our new open source overlords.

PS Not to be an unabashed google fanboy. I disable google now everywhere I go (battery chewing spyware), as well as killing all the maps background data processes, etc.. Google is great, but only if you install android fresh and turn off all their spyware.

Yet another law to ignore altogether. Ho hum. I suppose next you suggest I wear my seat belt, drive the speed limit, and pay a private corporation for the right to drive (insurance)? In the land of the insane, every law is in my ignore list.

Protons are not the size our current model suggests.
Gravity doesn't work on large scales the way our current model suggests.
We can't observer dark matter and dark energy the way our current model suggests.

There's literally hundreds of other examples, but am I the only one who thinks the problem is our current model?

I'm willing to wager dark matter/energy don't even exist. They are just made up to make the computer model work. Ridiculous.

Define, "Like a champ"

IMHO Skype for Linux is almost as crappy as skype for windows. I'm pretty surprised that google hangouts is actually on par, and by that I mean sub-par as well.

I've been looking for alternatives hi and low: VLCVC, Jitsi, Elastix.... So far I haven't found any video conferencing that's:

A> Good
B> Reliable
C> Multiplatform

Most of them seem to be a mix of b and c, and none of them are a.

Home. School.

Download every documentary made by man, Khan Academy, the NEA is a joke anyway, and public schools are awful. Get your kid involved in a different activity that connects them with other kids. School is an unmitigated fiasco.

There are many, many Ubuntu forks actually, but I think Linux Mint 14 XFCE edition (release candidate just out!) addresses this and many other concerns. In addition Mint is more popular than Ubuntu already on distrowatch and by several other metrics. It has a no nonsense interface (FUCK UNITY, and FUCK GNOME 3), is incredibly fast (8 second boot up on older hardware?!?! YES PLEASE!), and has all the good parts of Ubuntu baked in (apt, millions of apps, etc..).

Just get rid of Ubuntu altogether. It's been crap since it's crap brown days, and still is. They don't listen to end users, they don't really advance the platform, and I'm convinced Canonical has an agreement with Microsoft to continue to suck so that MS can stay in business.

Linux Mint is the bomb.com, go try it out and forget about Ubuntu!

All I can do is LOL at this response. Steve is obviously a genius and all of us owe a lot to him, but being woefully ignorant about the obvious and repeating failings of Apple (or in this case more than likely playing stupid) is not benefiting anybody.

Apple lost the smart phone war the same way they lost the PC war back in the 80s. In the 80s everyone was using Lotus Notes. Apple made their own competing product and tried to force users to buy it. They already had Lotus Notes. By locking the platform down they alienated users, developers, and the tinkerers that drive the whole band wagon.

Then in the 90s they did something GENIUS. They took Unix (Linux), gave it a pretty menu and made it usable by all. OS X was the last good thing Apple ever did in my opinion, and I'm not alone in this opinion. OS X is great, even today, and has been since day one.

Then what did Google do? The same exact thing. They took Linux, and made it usable for smart phones and tablets. And of course, Android ROCKS.

The difference here is between iOS and Android. Android has a wide open market, open source tools, encourages tinkerers and devs at every turn (see the XDA forums). Apple is locked down. iTunes or gtfo. iTunes sucks. It doesn't run right on ANYTHING, even OS X. It's a huge monstrosity of crap, and it regularly locks out innovators and tinkerers because they might threaten Apple's precious walled garden. Well, keep defending that walled garden because every tech worth his salt is already modding their android with jelly bean and writing .apks and putting them all over the universe.

The most egregious thing Apple has done is taking the ideas of other developers, locking them out of the market and then making their own Apple version of the previous app. What do you think those devs did? They left iOS and Apple forever, and with extreme prejudice. If it's YOUR PHONE, you shouldn't need to jailbreak it.

Then the patent suits about rectangles with rounded corners, a design that has been around over 20,000 years, including the ancient Egyptians? Apple is disgusting, I don't know any serious hacker who will support that company anymore. They already lost the new battle, a Nexus 7 does 50x more than any iProduct, and it's only $199! Less than half the price of an ipad that has less usable apps, less hacking potential, less OSes to try out, less everything.

1.3 MILLION androids are selling a day now. Dump your Apple stock and buy Google, Motorola, Samsung..... You know, market leaders that can see the obvious and follow the cash. Apple is going nowhere fast, their hey day ended the second Android began doubling their market share, and it's a net benefit for every geek and society as a whole. Apple has sucked since Woz left, maybe even before. And Jobs was clearly an asshole. His walled garden legacy is going to die on the vine, and I for one welcome our new open source unlocked free market overlords.

While the rest of the I/O stuff was awesome, I see this as an already failed product. I certainly don't have a use for it, whereas I'm ecstatic to purchase a Nexus 7 at some point. Let's hope the good idea of on-shoring doesn't die with the bad idea/price of the Q.

Most of the comments here are missing the larger issue(s):

Windows 7 and Windows Vista and (so far, certainly) Windows 8 are vastly inferior products.

Yes, I know on modern hardware that Windows 7 has some narrow performance advantages. Yes I know that XP x64 lacks drivers. Yes I know all the usual stupid arguments I hear about how Windows XP is not superior.

But I work in IT, EVERY DAY. Windows XP JUST WORKS, OUT OF THE BOX, with LITTLE OR NO TWEAKING, on ALMOST ALL HARDWARE.

Yes, I've been migrating my clients to Windows 7 for the last 5 years (reluctantly). But I don't have one that didn't prefer Windows XP for at least one critical reason or another.

I'm all for the latest and greatest. I'm a tech nerd for christ's sake! But Windows Vista was a total mess, and Windows 7 (Vista 2.0) isn't great either. Sure, once you disable Aero and tons of other cruft it's usable, but it's still not as usable or simple or intuitive as XP.

I would not presume to guess as to whether vaccines cause autism, but the ingredients they've been using in vaccines for YEARS are in fact toxic. Not long ago mercury was one of the most common ingredients.

Now, I understand the science behind vaccination, and am actually PRO vaccine, but when you can the ingredients to a box of cereal, but NOT the ingredients to a shot your a directly injecting into your infant, and more importantly a giant mega-corporation's shot with a proven track record of including known toxins like mercury.....

Sure, there is ignorance out there, but blaming parents who want to protect their children is stupid. Blame the giant corporations who included mercury in the shots in the first place.