I think you're overselling it somewhat. I've tried the swype systems, and I always devolve to just tapping. Same with my friends that have access to it. Out of 4 of us, all of us hate swype based systems. That's not data, obviously, it's just an anecdote.

I think the GP is overselling it a bit too, but I've been using the standard Android keyboard for a bit now, which includes swype-like typing, and I'd have a tough time switching back to just tapping. It's substantially faster and generally as accurate as tapping and quite a bit better than any miniature hardware keyboard I've tried. I don't know that if it wasn't built if I'd have bothered downloading Swype or Swiftkey, but it's nice to have the option.

In some ways, it reminds me of the difference between Newton HWR and Palm Graffiti; you had to learn some new patterns to use Graffiti, but when you got used to it, it was light years ahead of the performance of the natural handwriting recognition of the Newton.

...with the GOP, you have an even better chance of getting screwed.

Totally off-topic, but weren't you the one having eye problems?

How did that turn out?

"I think next winter will be:" when we sit around muttering "Write faster, George" and wonder if book 6 will actually get published in '15.

Of course if he'd set the series in eastern NC, where we're down to summer, winter, and one other season, book 7 would be entitled "A Dream of Pollen".

...that most of the right wing had secret hard-ons for Putin.

Speaking of whom...remember when Bush the younger talked about looking into Putin's eyes and seeing his soul?

Imagine my surprise to find myself in agreement with, of all people, Pat Buchanan, who said "Know what I see when I look into Putin's eyes? KGB!"

Well... Yes. All technology corporations try their best to bring technology to more people than before.

I couldd swear that Microsoft has been trying hard at the exact opposite...

...that the only thing that stirs more outrage than a nipple on TV is the chance that one will have to deal with a slow connection when downloading a picture of it.

People ***HATE*** "Windows". Windows is associated with work, pain, crazy difficulties, nerds and viruses. The brand name has negative value.

True. But it still gets more respect than "Windows Phone".

But maybe the real root of the problem is, why does the US truly need to 'project force' in a unilateral sense?

Because the 1800's taught us that wars on our own soil are bad. See, for example, the British burning Washington D.C. during the War of 1812 (which actually lasted 1812-14). The reason it is called the WHITE House was a not-so-subtle "Screw You!" to the British when we rebuilt it after they burned it to the ground.

The 1900's taught us that wars "over there" are much better. The US was the major economic and miltary superpower from 1945 to 1990 because our infrastructure wasn't destroyed by a continent-wide war 1939-1945.

A slightly different question is "Do we need to meddle in other people's affairs?" but, as a species, humans aren't good at not poking the bee hive.

Well, that would explain why my language center pretty much seized up trying to make sense of that.

On the one hand, I can't blame notch, because if Microsoft offered me enough cash to retire, I'd sell out. But on the other hand, notch is already a millionaire, right? It's not like he needs the money.

He might be a millionaire, but there's a subtle qualitative difference between retiring comfortably versus buying a large Pacific island, having an army of minions carve it into something that looks like a Minecraft world, and retiring comfortably.

If my wife is driving and I am riding then what?

It's supposed to be applicable to people caught (and, presumably, convicted) of texting and driving. I'm sure being stuck as a passenger with no interesting distractions other than the company of the driver and other passengers might be considered a living hell by some people, but such is life.

Several years ago, a kernel developer submitted a patch that greatly increased Linux performance for desktop-oriented tasks

Well, sure. But that'd be a kernel fork.

Here's the problem... I'm not clicking on an infoworld link, so I can only go by the summary, which clearly talks about forking Linux distributions, not the kernel. And I assume the submitter is a professional infoworld writer, so the emphasis on distributions must've been intentional (since, it being slashdot, it's not like an editor would ever actually do any editing).

Now, someone could fork the Linux kernel according to workload, but any sane distro would just handle that scenario with a linux-image-server and linux-image-desktop packaging option and maybe a few meta-packages to sort out any other distinctions. Not unlike the -smp and -bigmem kernels that were typical until multi-core multi-GB desktops showed up.

In other words, even if the article-I-won't-read is talking about a kernel fork, the conclusion in the summary doesn't necessarily follow.

I assume that this is yet another click-bait blog-spam article, because I can't imagine that anyone who knows jack about Linux distributions wouldn't be aware that server and desktop variants of various distributions have been and still are done.

More to the point, anyone who wanted it done that way would've or could've already done it. That the more popular distros don't generally make the distinction or don't emphasize it should be taken as a fairly solid answer to the question posed in the headline.

Actually, after learning about the ridiculous access privileges the Facebook app requires

Cyanogenmod with privacy guard locks Facebook down enough for me, but yes, that's the main reason I'd be using a browser otherwise.

The main advantage of using the app is smoother performance, bandwidth use seems somewhat lower (hard to tell for sure since if you use the browser it's aggregated with all the other browser traffic), and uploading things like pictures and video is far less hassle.

But generally speaking, I agree that if you don't have some way to restrict apps, you should either switch to the browser version of Facebook or put a decent ROM on your phone.