Sure. Here's a transcript of the earnings call. (You may need to register to read it.)

Nadella does say, early on in his prepared comments, that, "We will streamline the next version of Windows from three operating systems into one single converged operating system for screens of all sizes."

Later during the Q&A session, however, he was asked about how this "one version for all devices" would change the number of Windows SKUs that are available, and he said this:

Lots of hedging in there. You don't need a single, converged OS to give developers "one store, one commerce system, one discoverability system." Those are all ancillary functions. A "team with the layered architecture" doesn't sound like every version of Windows is going to share the same layers. And clearly nothing about Windows is going to be simplified from the customer's perspective; there will still be six or eight SKUs, with each offering different benefits.

Rather, I take Nadella's comments to mean he's streamlining the OS engineering group so that the people working on each Windows platform work in tandem with the others and they all have similar goals, milestones, etc (good).

I also take it to mean that Microsoft will offer developers who are building so-called Modern apps a common set of APIs that will be available on the various form factors, so they eventually should only have to write their apps once and they will run on every kind of device. That sounds OK, but it's only going to be true for Windows Store apps -- and to achieve that, you don't need every device to be running an identical OS.

In other words, no Holy Grail here, but Microsoft is streamlining and rationalizing its OS engineering efforts, which makes good sense at this juncture.

No, they're really more talking about the interface. The underlying nuts and bolts are already pretty much the same, in that Windows, Windows RT, and Windows Phone all share the same NT kernel. But above that there is plenty that's different from platform to platform. What Nadella wants to do is unify the development model and allow developers to create apps with UIs that react and readjust depending on the screen size of the device they're running on, much like how modern websites can support multiple screen sizes. All this talk about "one version of Windows" stems from a single, oversimplified comment Nadella made on the earnings call. When asked about it later, he completely backtracked and said there would not be any such thing.

Unfortunately for you, the actual article says the exact opposite of the summary (so what else is new on /.?): Other than the kernel and the app development model, there will be no unified version of Windows. There will always be different flavors of Windows for different kinds of devices and even multiple SKUs of the same version of Windows for different markets (consumer, SMB, enterprise, etc.)

I give him credit for not reminding you that he never even used the word "government." He said "society." You want rid of that, go live on some forgotten island in Indonesia and see how long you last. Until then, your attitude of "I've got mine, plus all the benefits society gives me as well, so fuck you, Jack" is not just selfish and stupid, it's completely morally bankrupt. You're a turd and you're really not worth anyone's breath.

That's a kinda silly thing to say. Anytime a problem comes up like this, it creates an opportunity for vendors. In the game development world, you have toolkits like Unity. Xamarin is already helping developers port C# code to OS X. And there are and will be lots of other solutions.

And Apple isn't even abandoning support for Objective-C. Nobody is being forced to code in Swift.

But what sense would that make? Why not just say, "Somebody else will have to implement UEFI support, because I'm Audi 5000" and abandon the project where it sits?

Yeah, but isn't it idiotic that to stop everything and shut down your computer, you clicked on "Start"?

That might be nice, but it's not hard to disable all of that stuff from the options. I use Word all day, every single day, and I don't ever have to wrestle with it. It does auto-correct some of my typos, too, for which I'm thankful.

Methinks you need to go back and watch Empire. There's a whole section in the middle with this little green guy that basically is all about your question.

No they were there on purpose, and they were all real, too. They weren't added in with CG, Abrams actually had people hiding around the set to shine lights into the lenses.

Given all that we know about GM, can someone explain (aside from the obvious political reasons / TBTF), why this company was bailed out? Romney was correct, it should have been allowed to go bankrupt. In addition, the taxpayer still had to eat a $10 billion loss. GM management was incompetent to the core. This idea is yet another example of it for all of the reasons you list and more.

Actually it's a bit different from what you describe. The government loads contracts with all kinds of deliverables beyond the actual product being requested, such as documentation that never reflects reality since there is never enough time to do all of it and deliver a product. Everyone knows it won't be read anyway.As often as not these things distract the contractors. Then there are the process mandates and contract requirements that employ large numbers of people who are all busy checking checkboxes. All of this is done to prevent failures, but obviously the failures occur anyway. Part of this is often because the government tries to create a Facebook or Google in a couple of years, but also because the regulatory environment designed to prevent failure is so complicated critical information can be lost or obscured. It's not that the "accountable ones" are not held to account because they work for government, it's more the case that the contract complexity almost makes it impossible to determine who really is accountable.

Obviously when you don't really know who is accountable for something you don't know who to ask for reliable information, so people start making assumptions. "You want escalators, not elevators? But the contract says vertical lift system. We interpreted that to as..."

Wowwww.... of all the trash people have to talk about Phantom Menace, I actually thought it was OK at the time. Maybe I was rationalizing. But Attack of the Clones was truly terrrrrrible, like really, really "I want my money and my time back" bad.

I disagree. Empire is superior in various aspects (SFX wise, acting wise, mood wise) but I don't think they add up to make a better movie. I think people like it because of all the cool stuff in it (AT-ATs, Yoda, Boba Fett) but if you think about it, it kinda starts in the middle of nowhere, ends in the middle of nowhere, and the heroes lose. It's just nowhere near as satisfying as the original, if you ask me.

Oh, and if you're an old crank like me, was your reaction to the big "revelation" about Darth Vader like mine -- you assumed he was lying? Seriously, it probably wasn't until I actually saw Jedi that people could convince me it wasn't some kind of con designed by Vader to place doubt in Luke's mind. Even as a little kid, it came from so far left field that it seemed a little silly. Why all the business about Luke's father being "the best star pilot in the galaxy" if from Empire onward he never pilots a single thing?