Why does a distributed social network need servers at all? Why not just flag stuff on your PC to share? It gets copied encrypted into a bittorrent directory using a session key, and that session key is held in a wrapper than can only be unencrypted by the people/group you have 'shared' with. The bittorrent network will ensure it's available even when your computer is off. Adding nodes to boost network speed just means pointing some bittorrent client to that .torrent.

Phillip.

I would say the winners of 2013 would have been Mint and Ubuntu Unity. The former kept up its head of steam from the previous year, and the latter became so polished it was winning over a lots of haters.

In 2014 Unity got shotgunned by insisting on sticking spyware in the desktop by default and veering towards mobile. Definitely the big losers of 2014. KDE came up with their latest distro based on the new QT but lack of polish on the desktop meant they didn't get much traction.

Gnome desktop has probably made the most progress, but screwed themselves by being the best on minority distro Slackware and the most popular distro Ubuntu running an old buggy version.

So I would say the winner would be Mint due to being the only one not to fuck up.

Phillip.

I have to agree with BarberaHudson. Of course market share is a major factor in how much advertising is worth. Companies also look at growth. When Firefox was expanding with no end in sight then signing an expensive deal would have been worth it for Google: if Firefox became de facto then they had an exclusive deal and captured all the eyeballs, and if their immature project took off and became de facto then... they still had all the eyeballs. Once growth starts tailing off the value of marketing drops.

However the funding had in part to do with the marketing aspect, and secondly to buy their way into creating a level playing field. They were perfectly aware of the Microsoft embrace and extend, and they way they tried to lock business users into IE using ActiveX plugins. A completely open source browser dedicated to open standards getting a majority share of the market would ensure that the market remained wide open and ripe for picking once they had advanced their own browser far enough to complete.

The deal probably will be renegotiated but will it be a lot of pain? Possibly not. If the investment was wisely used, refactoring, quashing most of the memory leaks, boosting the JS engine, etc, then if they "broke the back" of getting a great stable core then perhaps a renegotiated deal will be fine for both parties. Google certainly can't afford for Firefox to go away yet. With Google facing ant-trust cases in various countries, helping "promote choice" is not a bad PR move either. As well as providing yet another alternative to Safari on Apple.

Phillip.
PS - AC fuck off. You are wrong and BarberaHudson is right

I have a task bar on my desktop. It's a simple shell extension. I minimise stuff all the time. Nautilus not having a minimise button is one of the only things that drives me nuts.

Phillip.

Why not just click the suspend button under the power icon on the top bar (if you hold down Alt it displays suspend instead of shutdown)? Works for my workstation.

Phillip.

I think users tend to slop around from desktop to desktop. I know I have used most of them out there. I really really wish Ubuntu would move to 3.12, let alone 3.14. It's very annoying. Suspend is easy though, simply hold down alt, click power icon then suspend. Works fine on my 2 monitor tower.

With KDE still having usability issues and Unity having spyware, this would have been a great opportunity for Gnome to get market share. Instead you have a choice of installing Slackware and losing that amazing Ubuntu repository, or having the wide range in software but being stuck on buggy 3.10. What a waste.

Phillip.

Samsung galaxy S2 April 2011, S3 May 2012, S4 April 2013, S5 April 2014.

Apple iPhone 3S July 2008, iPhone 4 October 2011, iPhone 5 September 2012, 6S September 2014.

The Apple market are completely locked into one device, and are forced to wait twice as long on average to be able to upgrade. Therefore I would expect the numbers to be twice as large initially but dying off to a far smaller total than the Samsung devices.

Phillip.

If it's a video, you can see if he is going it correctly. With two factory resetted phones, pressing the on buttons at the same time and seeing which one boots first is not rocket science to do. Lab not needed. Same with launching a browser.

Phillip.

I don't get it. Germany is the most dependent on Russian gas and Angela Merkel has been the one most dragging their heels on even sanctions. Why would the open letter be addressed to her? Why all the Iraq WMD comparisons when the open letter even admits Germany didn't even want to get involved there? The Baltics states will be the only ones pushing for direct action, and Britian the only one able to take any.

In fact reading through their previous open letters they all seem a bit confused. The only common thread appears to be Russia should be allowed to deny Ukraine access to NATO and a bunch of odd vaguely but not really related historical incidents being thrown in to make the letters appear longer. Their language such as calling the separatists "anti-coup federalists" makes the letters appear to come from a Russian rather than a non-Russian perspective.

I think the "bury out heads in the sand and hope Russia doesn't do anything" is a little late. He's already invaded Georgia once and Ukraine twice. His home propaganda is a resounding success, with the people prepared to back future invasions, and the parliament is filled with his puppets. Ukraine joining NATO or falling under New Soviet rule seems inevitable and they probably prefer the former.

Phillip.

The invasion of Europe by Russia is pretty big news, and will have an impact on everything from the economy to space exploration. NATO has direct evidence of the invasion, and Russia is hardly trying to hide it any more apart from the loopy puppet Sergei Lavrov (the new Muhammed Saeed al-Sahaf). Ukraine has already introduced conscription, so that's already a pool of potentially talented young programmers off to get slaughtered by Russian tanks. The Russian murder of those Dutch people in the airliner also has affected air traffic.

As Europe gets sucked unwillingly into war with Russia, this is going to get quite brutal as the Putin doesn't care how many people die on either side even his own. He's got a fair amount of cyber-warfare talent to call on too. Maybe this will be the wake-up call to start putting in place proper encryption EVERYWHERE. War with Russia is a little more important than the NSA passing on tips on drug dealers.

Phillip.

Thirded. I wasted so much time (and some money) trying to get Plex up and going on my server/devices and the quality of the video is crap. I use ES File Explorer now on all my devices to browse the NAS and play videos. This and K9 Mail are two I install and it's not even worth looking for a replacement as they do their job so well.

Phillip.

Is this the Russia that denied having any active units in the Crimean region of Ukraine? Hmm... who to believe...

Phillip.

A bit like they were not invading the Crimean region of Ukraine?

Phillip.
PS you should probably look at a map. Ukraine is quite big.

Russians are being paid to flood the site with propaganda. Unfortunately it doesn't make any sense so you can't argue with it. You just have to sift through the crap to find the real comments.

Phillip.

I'm bewildered. Is this a real post or something computer generated? If the latter then the algorithms need some tweaking as it's the most bizarre drivel I have ever read.

Phillip.