"I use a laptop, but I rarely do local compute on it, only cloud-based stuff; so I'm willing to spend $400+ on a device that arbitrarily limits me to ONLY doing cloud stuff, and can never do any useful local compute if I need it".

Car analogy: I only use a maximum of 63 horsepower in my daily commute, so I'm going to go out and buy a brand new car with a 63 horsepower engine.

So was the last cycle. Sarah Palin, Carly Fiorina - without nametags it would be hard to tell them apart.

So once I did the accounting system for a car dealership..... in short:

if ((firstname == EASTER_FIRST) && (lastname == EASTER_LAST))
        discount = EASTER_DISCOUNT;

and hey presto, if I bought a car there, instant 15% discount.

Bad news: It was a GM dealership. In other words.... it was *still* better to buy a Honda.

An app that you don't want, is completely useless, that consumes storage space, but is not removable - that, to me, is harmful. By that measure, 99.9% of Android phones contain harmful apps.

Just wait until one of the cannot-be-uninstalled apps comes up with a major security vulnerability. That's going to be fun to watch.

They can log *a* visit, and know *an* IP, but they can't uniquely identify you versus the 1,753 other people at that Starbucks today.

If media sites become financially liable for the harm that their content does, Fox News is in deep trouble.

Mr. Jackson: your editorial advice is clearly needed here at Slashdot. Article summaries have become a leading cause of frustration for those of us who can actually read and write English.

You know, by now I'm used to articles in the mainstream news who confuse an operating system, applications (which may or may not ship with an operating system), and the look/feel that a particular GUI puts on both. However, a web site like Slashdot - self-proclaimed home of "news for geeks" - should be able to do a little bit better.

Oh, absolutely. That's why vi is so useful.

Among the new features of this alternative to Vim and Emacs is a fully-functionality undo system, Vim-compatible file locking, linter support, formatter support, flexible syntax highlighting, and many bug-fixes.

This is one of the problems with open source development; people will spend endless hours perfecting the buggy whip; not to mention coming up with new, competing buggy whip designs.

Whatever floats your boat, I guess; but there are countless other open source projects in real need of help.

A watch is a mechanical timepiece you wear on your wrist. The Apple product mentioned is a small computer you wear on your wrist.

Expensive watches are mainly expensive because of the internals, not because of the case. Sure, gold/silver/etc will drive up the price - but a good mechanical watch in a stanless steel case can still cost $10,000 - because of the intricate, hand-assembled internals. Replace those internals with $10 worth of silicon circuitry and a display, and it won't be worth $10K any more, even though there's the same name on the face.

Assuming that all things you wear on your wrist are interchangeable is like assuming all automobiles are interchangeable. Taking an Aston Martin and replacing the engine/transmission/driveline with one from a Ford Focus isn't going to create a desirable vehicle, and it won't be worth $140,000.

I think Linus' point was: C++ makes it extraordinarily easy to write crap code. Even otherwise intelligent people, who can produce solid functional code in other languages, produce unmaintainable garbage in C++. And, when they do, it's so much harder to clean up afterwards.

Not C.