Except that you can't keep throwing away whole eco-systems like its 2001. And .net didn't mess with the start menu or UI like this effort has.
And if you_do choose to change the oil tanker, know that incorrect course navigation isn't an accident.

Metro since very early on was clearly a disaster. Put aside the programming behind it, which may or may not be accepted, the rock solid base is that its broken the desktop. Its broken the back catalogue, and its just a very very poor desktop replacement. Its not a good touch environment. What is it good at ? Its not even good at replacing 'start'. Its just a galloping great mess, and everyone knows it. Rehashing isn't working, and the 8.1 is just a fantasy land throw of the dice.

Its probably not related. But when the world largest PC shipper(Lenovo) go Public with a 'well, if you are not going to fix this start menu disaster - we will' public PR and operational answer, and the CEO of MS resigns, you could claim to see a link. When your largest partners start issuing deep 'fuck you' responses, you know your project is failed.

No one - no one who matters - likes Metro. And customers absolutly hate it. You only need spend a short time in the customer env to really feel this.

Microsoft being broken up would break the things they have that are working. So their cloud/application linkage in azure would be broken up.
The area where the disaster has taken place is in Windows. By making 8 - they've irrepairably damaged 7, and 8.1 doesn't fix it. The cloud area they worked on has been destructive of on premise IT, which is dumb. You don't need that damage.

If you really kill windows, you're in very deep trouble on the server and application sides, and it requires a full rework.

Although at present Azure works and their cloud works, its so dependant on end user windows machines that they are no in a very deep hole. And Ballmer going I think echo's this.

Its a shame, because frankly there is some damn good stuff in the stable, and its inter operations work at a level nothing else does. Break up doesn't help that at all in any way.

BB remains the only handset/technical network that I can put users on a world wide tariff and provide a secure service at a reasonable cost. Period.
Sadly, Blackberry seems to be run by idiots, who don't understand their own strength, or their own product.

And yes, I can put my users on Iphones and on Android and I can cry my eyes out as soon as they leave the borders of the country they live in.

Even *if* they remodelled the business in software, they could still leveage BB core work and sell a really workable product. Yes, not for everyone, and yes, aimed at corp, business and gov - but they seem lost in terms of what they are.

Lying to the customer base is bad too and Thorsten Heinz needs to be fired. The Playbook isn't getting 10? Liar.

CEO's that lie or get their baseline facts wrong are worthless. They are worthless to whom they work for and worse for their customer. He had his shot - he should resign.

All I've seen in general is that Acer make average and poor PC equipment, knocked out generally at below market prices as their model, and with at best average support.
To be fair I've over generalising somewhat - but what I laid out applies to too much of the Acer family.

Moving to Chrome and Android will be a simpler model. The problem is that its a full on race to the bottom. Your value as Acer is null. Its in the OS. And beyond that, unless you are on the winning edge hardware wise and winning at review level, you'll face the full on might of Samsung and Google and Apple, and they will out device you anyway.

Just box shifting the edge, and on cost is heading to a level where only the huge vendors left standing will be left, and where the Soc costs leaves only enough margin for those vendors anyway.

Unless you are that vendor, you will be where you are in PC land in only months.

The only place in tech for smaller outfits is one of excellence and boutique level stuff. Acer needs to become something other than yet another box shifter, or its dead.

They should seek out being an alienware or Origin level vendor where their is a price premium and an extra service - but the problem is this is Acer.

why >?

I pay a fortune for very average healthcare, and I support myself and my children, and I live in a challenging and difficult knowledge based society where people are down to 2.4 Children generally and cannot affort to even buy a house unless they find £300,000, and where both people generally have to work just to pay for it.

Its not quite as fucking Elysium as you fucking paint.

I've grown more and more fed up of this kind of posturing from people like Gates.

While its nice that he is working on vaccines and is on a crusade for healthcare, the world has far deeper problems. We have entire failed states where stupid people have children that they simply cannot look after. They cannot feed them. They cannot educate them. This behaviour has become one where its rewarded and not penalised. This isn;t viable. It cannot work. Its_not going_to_work - They cannot economise the places where they live - and yet birth rates and economic collapse is only underwritten and fueled by people like Gates. Entire cities are now based around being refugees, and living off food aid and have no sustainable living capability at all - and are only maintained by wholly bankrupt operandai.

The human population on this planet is exploding. There are 7 billion, 103 Million, 448,849 people and its sky rocketting upwards. The numbers of people and growth are going to dwarf Gates vaccine programs, and food aid, and the numbers of people dying will upward curve, and I don't wish harm directly on anyone - but the fucking source of problems has to be faced.

For every child Gates saves, his program better be ten fold bigger to treat the children that will come from it. Same for food aid.

The programs that people like Gates are running paint a picture of fighting poverty. That is true. They fight short term poverty. They *do not* fight long term poverty, deprivation, or lack of healthcare. They create the fuel on which the next wave will burn.

At some point, the inhuman reality will have to be faced. Unsustainable human growth and failed states, on land that cannot sustain the populations, will run out of even generous people's large donations. Even if the most humanitarian people keep swinging, at some point round 12 billion, and even with advances in food, the reality is huge death tolls.

This can only be stopped now, and it can only be stopped now by harsher policies that at least focus people to behave and change their ways. Humans have for millenia realised that population control can become a scenario that cannot be avoided, except in our own population. Somehow this has become skewed to the degree that we refuse to believe it, and will avoid it no matter what the cost or logic.

Scale.
When people use services at scale, it creates focal points for collection or abuse. People have bought into Google,Yahoo, Microsoft. Lazy, cheap people - who have little or no values, little pointless rubber people who accepted the something for nothing offer, and now find that 'their' data - is no longer 'their' data. Suddenly people jump about like these guardian fuckheads.

The beauty of the internet - is that any person can use it. Any person can actually do what they like. You don't have to accept an NSA or FBI world, and you don't have to transit your data in clear text. Do you have to put in work on this? Sure. Does it have to be paid for? Off course.

I grew up in a world where the west larely blocked access to encryption, and todays world is just an extension of the world I've lived in. Do I think that Tempora is aimed at me? No, Its aimed at the islamic fuckheads who should not be inside the borders anyway. But if it was only aimed at them, its like the stop and search - its racist not to do everyone. Thats how twisted things have become.

The irony is that guardian readers operate in a world where they have for extended time operated with leftist bias. They want immigration. They want bad things. Then they want the immigrant seraches to stop 'because its racist'. Now - having supported the introduction of 5th column terrorism and enemies inside the gates, the latest wheeze is crying about big evil american corps and 'govt'. Touch shit. There was a time many years ago where it wasn't required. Now - because of the world the guardian believes in - it is.

I have little time for it. People need to grow up. If your mail was an issue from a privacy standpoint, why did you ever put it on other people servers. The same for Facebook, etc etc. This isn't free, and never was, and always has elements of 'deal with the devil'.

The answer is a simple one. Become a geek. Run your own servers. Run your own data. Its never been easier, nor so low cost to do this. And you can choose your own encryptions or systems. You think the people who built apple, MS, google, yahoo did not rail against the system before becoming part of it?

That its nice to see this. But Carmack isn't what he was. Nor is quakecon really. Recent ID stuff has'nt shone and the input isn't as valuable as it once was. I kinda have the feeling that ID and Carmack have settled. New upstarts don't have that hunger sated and this is the issue really I have with Carmack - nice guy that he is..

Thats exactly what I would do. I'd take the most insecure, badly run, malware and virus vector based language and embed deeply in sensitive and financial systems.
Why not? What can possibly go wrong.

I wonder when Java will be able to be updated by an admin account via a standard user account on Windows. But then I wonder when Oracle will wake up and smell the coffee.

I'd agree. But Android isn't getting there. Its kind of worse. If our computing ethos is to simply change one moniker (Microsoft) for (Google) and revert to a single user OS (windows 95) >> Android - and to go back to pretty much the worst security landscape imaginable (Hi Android circa 2013) - I'm sat here trying to establish that I've not just seen us move totally side ways and not forward.

Whats next I ponder - a google 'trustworthy computing moment?'

Maybe people are happy that MS has taken the hit and that Linux is on top (or is establishing itself there) - but I'm sat here thinking that most malware is pushed from Linux servers, and that things must be different than just clapping Linux wins for the sake of Linux wins..

I'm not writing this as an MS fan either, just as someone who look at the current state of things as being pretty fucking dire as they stand..

My desktop has enormous storage options. So, no. I would not really use SD cards for storage there .

Now, unless you have a 2.5 inch or 3.5 inch slot, or other option on the phone, Yes, SD card storage is good.

Because some people like their own storage, and don't actually like the cloud storage game. Not for everyone I am sure.

Absolutely. Why isn't there someone doing a device with more than one?
The biggest hole in all current 'fashion' devices is storage.

Is that what was presented was nice, but contained nothing that was really wow in any way. As such its a premium phone/tablet and there is convincing to be done.

Would I really pay double for this phone - if so.. why? I honestly did not see anything really ahead of the curve despite Mr Shuttleworth trying to intimate that the phone handset market is conservative (it used to be, I am less than sure that HTC ones and Samsung Galaxy 4's are such .. the hand sets seem to be racing along tech wise from where I sit..)

Nokia had the opportunity to examine the OS up close I am sure before putting all their eggs in the basket. Saying now that the OS isn't what they wanted is different from Symbian how?

And they dumped Symbian.

Nokia isn't very innovative. I have hosts of their phones. And I have their earlier tablets. Molasses moves faster, and any development or updating was based around an old school of update slow, if at all, and avoid anything dramatic. Riddled by 'buy the next handset' if you want more - no company wrote off their newer stuff faster.

The N900 (with an updated screen) could have been the basis for an ongoing linux based phone - but not at molassess snail rate development. Nokia understand how to make hardware. The part they have utterly failed to grasp is that in the end, its the software that runs on the tin that actually ends up mattering much more than they believed it did.

Android and Iphone have brutally changed the old landscape. The older school mentality has no place left, and they will be evolved out. Throwing huge gasps of air (41MP cameras) grafted onto Phones with systems people don't want won't stop the drowning end.

Nokie still ship a lot of low end phones - That in the end might be there best market placement