Everyone has their opinion about what their laptop should be 10x better at. Few people stop to think about what they'd have to give up to get it. Laptops are the very essence of compromise in computing, a more interesting question is what can you throw out to get what you want.

Want better battery life? I hope you like carrying giant sacks of bricks.

Oh, so you actually want it more efficient? OK, stick in a crappy CPU and a ton less memory. And get rid of any radios for WiFi or 3G/LTE.

Want a bigger screen and/or higher pixel density? Hope you like halving your battery life, or just cutting the back-light to "barely readable".

Want a ton more fast storage? How much money are you willing to pony up for flash?

Of course, if your answer is "I want it bigger/faster/better without the compromise"... well then just wait. In case you haven't noticed, it's exactly what the industry has been doing. It's not like they're sitting on their hands.

Keep floggin' that dead Larrabee horse, Intel.

... then you could buy a 2.6oz battery case?

It's good to see, and a pleasure to read, rational discourse on patents who knows what the fuck they're talking about. Almost every single article about patents is so for wrong, calling it a straw-man argument is a joke. Let's have more articles like this on /., please.

Why does it have to be someone else's fault? Why's it Mac OS X's fault? Or Microsoft's monopoly? Or even ABI compatibility? Where's the analysis of whether the bulk of average-joe users actually like using Linux desktops?

Seriously, it's the first explanation that needs to be looked it. Yes, many of people love their Linux desktops, and they're very vocal here on slashdot. But is there any Linux desktop that is there today, or has been, that could be loved by the masses?

I switched from Linux desktops about years ago and there's nothing about it I miss.

... until a misinformation document gets rolled up into a report to higher ups and the president and policy is set or action is taken based on it.

ie. what could possibly go wrong?

"Just the simple task of separating two kinds of files from a single directory, 'mkdir GIF;mkdir JPG;mv *.gif ./GIF;mv *.jpg ./JPG' and I'm done -- five seconds to accomplish that. How long would it take in a pretty looking GUI?"

Create two directories; sort by file type; drag & drop * 2... done. And it'll deal with mixed case extensions. Don't get me started about Mr. "You can't do that FTP transfer in less than 8 mouse clicks". vs 32 keystrokes. I'm not sure where his maths comes from.

They also don't go into how far you are away from destroying the world with a CLI:

sudo rm -Rf ~/bin

is one keystroke from

sudo rm -Rf ~ /bin

Or just the simple case of "cp a b c/", only you eagerly hit enter before "c/" so you blow away b with no checks.

And who knows what you get when your super awesome smart shell loop isn't escaped properly on a filename with a space, quotes or apostrophe in the name.

GUI or CLI -- do whatever you like -- but don't base your choice on the "quality" of information from the types of people in this article.

In Australia getting to the polls on voting day is mandatory. You're fined otherwise. This really gets people to vote. Digital only leads to vulnerabilities.

Your security concerns are legitimate, which is why you should get a chipset with VT-D support.

Yes

That's the whole point of trusted computing. It's an excellent thing.

Revocation is critical to security.

It's one-off fee for a commercial company. Get over it.

The real story here, though, is that they're actually taking a real stab at doing signing right and requiring a chain of trust. They're also doing it in a very cooperative open source way.

This is an excellent step for the assurances of trusted computing for their users!

If the little guy sues he's liable for triple damages? Which is probably a drop in the ocean for the big guy? This is meant to improve the situation how?

Lol... "Somalia's worse, ergo, nothing needs fixing". That's some great logic there, Lou.

In response to GP, though... it's clear the TSA's busted. What other good-for-nothing orgs are there? I'm generally of the opinion some have some actual value :)

So it's perfectly acceptable for any physical confrontation to end up with a dead body, no questions asked?

It doesn't matter who started the confrontation, only one person in it had the ability to make it a deadly one.

Your fixed version isn't. The victim didn't have a gun. Or a knife. Or a brick. Lethal force was not clearly necessary, and using it means you should be on trial for murder to determine if that's the case.