When Apple does something with an arrogance similar to them (they didn't) on desktop UI, when you ask them "Who the hell are you?", they can reply "We basically invented consumer desktop environment" and you shut up. Microsoft does have some credits too, they came up with their own way of desktop paradigm.

What are the credentials and references of Gnome 3 designers? Adding some note taking trojan to Debian to trigger Mono install? I may have broken how Debian stable is intended to run since I went nuts when I saw that trojan and completely uninstalled Gnome&depsIt felt like seeing Ballmer's face on my wallpaper when I saw that badly written Mono junk inside Debian. So, sorry if I am flaming a bit.

Here is a test for you if you have bandwidth and can stop laughing after a logical period. Obviously it is a FIRMWARE UPDATER, don't actually run it!

Help doc (from a company who is very close to MS and others)
http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/selfservice/search.jsp?DocId=215451

Exe file (as I said, just don't run it!)
http://www.seagate.com/staticfiles/support/downloads/firmware/MomentusXT-ALL-SD25.exe

Idiots didn't even create a mechanism to alert false positive so we, "dumb users!" ignored the warning after doing a Kaspersky and Virustotal scan and run it.

As a powerpc mac owner, I can tell you the reason. For one reason or another, developers (including a lot of oss folks) insist coding X86 only software along with SSE stuff.

So lets say you dare to buy an ARM based netbook, you will find a lot of -already not enough- existing software has either no binary packages or impossible to compile for ARM. Add idiots like Nokia who acquired Qt and removed PowerPC 10.5.8 (most stable OS on planet, no enhancements posted) from official support or Adobe who also removed support from such a stable OS (even in flash plugin updates), you see the picture.

Sad thing is, one can't even blame Apple -yet-. They said "Please use OS X APIS, please don't do hacks" to people who wants future/backwards compatibility. People who listened to them still just clicks to some pref in XCode (or add couple flags to gcc) and ship everything to 10.5.8 and 10.6.x even without having a 10.5.8 machine.

PS: Please don't even mention "everything can be compiled, gcc is so great" etc. type stuff. Just point me to a Mozilla Firefox 4.x officially supported ppc binary (you can compile as tenfourfox on 10.4.11) or Opera, the ARM guys and their PPC compatible 11.x release.

As a person who uses smart phones since Nokia 7650, I know what is required to have a decent smart connected device experience. It is basically everything which MS wouldn't care about. It is in their culture, they are desktop/server OS vendors.

A zero day on a Desktop OS could be easily prevented with a decent antivirus, security policy. On a mobile, connected device, it is out of the question. Windows Update service can easily use more than 220MB of RAM and block an entire CPU core, on mobile it means your device is completely unusable.

If you write a mobile application and sell it, Symbian users and the OS itself isn't really forgiving when it comes to quality of code. They aren't really used to crashes, restarting phone, low battery life and sluggishness.

So how do you sell these guys (and girls) some 1.0 OS with a real bad reputation of 3rd party app quality which even lacks copy/paste? I mean for some idiots behind agreement, it is like N8 owner who has been abandoned by Nokia will run to market and buy Windows 1.01 Nokia handset when it ships. Trust me, they actually believe that.

Funny is, even markets didn't buy it.

If Nokia management/developers spared couple of minutes to read The Register and its mobile section for almost a decade and actually understood it, this wouldn't have happened at first place.

You know, their tradition is "tabloid" so idiot suits may have missed free alarm bells for almost a decade.

It is not like trolltech was some gigantic company to begin with. Qt will live on, perhaps way better as Nokia gave up the stupid idea of pushing Qt framework to host OS which -itself- needs radical changes to begin with.

Ask a N97 user what he/she feels about Qt when the device C: (yes it exists!) has only 20 MB of free disk space. If Nokia gets the hell out of the way, trolltech has pretty much guaranteed the future readiness of qt with the radical 4.x changes. Same for KDE too.

Remember one thing, people buying Symbian phone have made their choice for battery life, stability and some degree of freedom.

Anyone thinking they will all line up for iOS is wrong. Android? Perhaps. The real winner here is Blackberry once their QNX based devices start to ship (or handsets upgraded). Now the rumor is BB/QNX has also Android compatibility (that micro kernel can do anything), things will get real interesting.

Issue isn't MS OS (which is a joke, at least now). The issue is, Nokia boss did a quick patch which really failed to impress anyone.

If that IDIOT (ask all Symbian users) who still asks for access point while there is a perfectly working wi-fi in range is still there. Or, the other idiot who doesn't embed Birdstep Smart Connect (which is globally licensed) to device menu/ROM to fix issue is still there, what has been fixed? Now they will code the same junk in Windows language, that is all.

Only Apple could figure the real problem and proudly erased their own, decades old OS and switched to OS X. If you think it was smooth, ask any Mac user who had bad luck to install the first incarnations of it. It sucked, 3rd parties were clueless and community were flaming at them. What did they do? They basically did "so don't touch there", ignored.

As a Symbian user, I wished death of Symbian was because of MeeGo, e.g. "Now we have made up our mind, we are allocating all resources (they are gigantic) to MeeGo and Qt development. Qt will soon officially run on anything having a CPU, equally".

Instead of fixing anything other than kernel (it had no problem), they went with someone else 1.0 kernel. EKA2 kernel is the only victim here. Here we rewind progress again, 10 years this time.

Funny is, RIM, who is always being blamed to be old fashioned did take the radical decision. They have chosen QNX, no matter whoever says anything, just remember the 1.44 MB floppy having a web browser and imagine their head start.

For people who choose Bing, the reason is likely they are fed up with SEO which became like a cancer or some kind of human powered worm and the stance of Google against user privacy.

If they copy Google that way and openly admit they already "spy" (OK OK, anonymous data) users who trusted them by installing the needless toolbar, what is left as a reason? It is clearly not Microsoft since they know their image and childishly take measures to hide their brand from Bing.

Slashdot is the messenger who is repeatedly getting shot by people who claims to have larger IQ than Joe Public.

For years, I have chosen Yahoo just because it is less popular, SEO idiots doesn't care, I got an account from 1998 so they already spied the hell out of me and they had these tiny inventions like integrating MCafee sitechecker to results.

Now, it is just another interface to Bing with horrible spam results (just like Google!) and Mcafee started to disappear sometimes. Perhaps their "partner" doesn't like the fact that anything regarding windows software download may and will have "red" results.

So thanks to super elite Google fans and Tech media/clueless business guys, we lost the only real alternative to Google search.

It would be very hard to explain it English but, the broken/robot like turkish of Windows versions is legendary. Even Steve Balmer when visited Turkey got surprised when he heard it "first time" from reporters.

Considering English version of Windows sells at least 30% more expensive and still being bought by IT professionals and businessmen, you can imagine the degree of broken Turkish.

As I don't really like anything number 1, especially a one with very questionable/spam results in Turkish, I decided to give a try to Bing Mobile on my Nokia/Symbian handset. It took 5 secs for me to give it up and post feedback to MS. The reason? I saw the EXACT, made up Turkish in a single line on 320x240 mobile screen. The rest was? Logo! So they spent billions of dollars, risked their "get along" with Google, I am betting there are way more than 1000 Turks working at that company who absolutely knows the horrible Turkish of Windows and they end up with the very same language (can't claim it is turkish) on their latest project, Bing.

Copying Google? Oh well, I didn't need proof. When Bing was first launched, it was clean. I didn't get virus/trojan/spyware infested sites as results when I look for a software title. I said "Just the Windows and support searches may keep it afloat" jokingly. Recently did a search again, download3k and various known suspects with "red" ratings from any sane search security product (e.g. mcafee) started to appear. The results were the very reason I gave up Google for search on any not so secured computer/device. So, lets say, what left? Yahoo search gone too, ask.com? I started to use dmoz directory more&more, the problem is, it is not 1997 anymore.

Turkish Windows not being fixed can be explained by millions of pages of documents needing to be updated with training/manuals and even their exams. So lets say the disaster already happened without any kind of possible fix. What is the issue with SEARCH service which started months ago?

BTW, for Grammar guys on Slashdot or MS supporters: English is not my native language and I didn't charge $140 to write this message so, don't waste your time.

It is all about geography. Nordic had to have best of class wireless/broadband because of weather conditions and gigantic mountains which you can't reliably "wire" or even if you did, you can't maintain.

It is why Ericsson, Nokia kind of companies came from that area.

The issue with the USA is the huge area which has to be covered. Compare USA to entire Scandinavia area.

Except "anti government" types (many exist), most of security professionals will happily serve their country or the globe, it can be NSA or Interpol or FBI. Of course, I don't speak about "the code to watch everyone" kind of contribution, perhaps some serious quirk (like the DNS one) which may effect entire country or globe.

It is not like 1990s anymore, every machine is connected and I am betting there are many serious security issues being found, fixed behind closed doors.

Anyway, it really seems impractical to add "backdoors" to operating systems rather than watching/tapping the entire network which is OS/device neutral itself.

For iOS devices? As Apple doesn't allow antivirus/firewall to their devices, some trojan may already exist without anyone knowing about it. That is the problem with iOS/App Store. You can't have "extra security" even if you want to pay for it. On Symbian/Android and even Pre-Win 7 mobile, if you are paranoid or carry sensitive data, you cough some money to Kaspersky/F-Secure and have extra security/firewall.