All they would have to do is fork Android and replace all the proprietary Google parts with their own. There is nothing secret or shady about this. See: Amazon Kindle Fire.

Microsoft would just have to jump into it fully. I like the Amazon App market, but I've found apps in it are often several versions behind apps in the Google Play store. If something like that is going to work, app makers are going to have to support multiple app stores, and do so fully.

Even though I like Amazon giving Google the competition, I find I'm starting to get apps from Google more because they seem to be supported better.

I have been reading slashdot since about 1999-2000.

I've been a user since 1996-1997. Fuck Beta. The most obvious thing is they don't seem to give a shit about our feelings. I'm sorry you are getting annoyed, but it won't be long before we won't have to worry about anything in the comments, because there won't be any comments any more. It's like sitting with a dying relative. You see death coming, but there really isn't anything that is going to stop it. Sucks, but Fuck Beta.

Fuck you.

let the rest of us get back to discussing real issues?

Enjoy it while you can, because when Beta goes mandatory, there will not be any more comments.

And why should you change if what you had worked great. I'm not against change, just as long as it is change for the better. If they came out with some new snazzy looking way to write code, but everyone said it sucks...but the old way worked just fine...then freaking stick with the old way. Unless you just don't care about actually making writing code better. Now who in their right mind would want to change something just to make it worse?

Posting this from Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, and I consider pre-Unity as a "classic desktop," and it is Gnome.

Seriously, I have nothing against change, but I think there should be a cross-distro standard desktop that JUST FREAKING STAYS THE SAME. There should also be bleeding-edge environments for more adventurous people. Why shouldn't people have a choice? But it would be nice to install most any popular version of Linux and get a standard desktop.

So the free market will do what New York couldn't with taxes...drive the price of junk food up! Sweet.

[O]verall, OS/2 failed to catch on in the mass market and is little used outside certain niches where IBM traditionally had a stronghold. For example, many bank installations, especially Automated Teller Machines, run OS/2 with a customized user interface.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS/2

Yes, this. Someone had some taxpayer money to spend to come up with this crap. When the law and the NSA are playing S.H.I.E.L.D, this will look really cool on the monitors. And then they will time it for a holiday or other important day and release the DDoS.

I used to brush every day, but not always two - three times a day. Always had cavities and inflamed gums. Lost a few back teeth that couldn't be saved (but at least they were in the back). I got a Sonicare for Christmas a few years back. I haven't had a cavity since. Got a check-up yesterday and he said my gums looked great. In fact, cleanings used to be very, very painful. Not so much anymore.

True story. My second cleaning after getting the Sonicare, the person cleaning my teeth said she was going to get one. She had receding gum lines herself, and she was so impressed with my improvement that she was getting one. Her exact words were, "you may have just saved my teeth."

And suppose he tried that, he ended up in jail, and the government was somehow able to spin damage control and minimize his efforts? You make some good points, but he took the most realistic path of options to make sure he didn't go down in vain. I must admit, when this all started, I thought it would blow over fairly quickly. Most events like this have. In the end, the only thing that America responds to is money. That Snowden is costing corporations money here is the best thing to happen to America since apple pie. The Constitution is gone and our Rights are a joke, but cost corporations some money, and maybe we will see baby steps taken in the right direction.

Soldiers fight for our freedom? As if fighting in some third-world crap hole has anything to do with our freedom here in the United States. I think Snowden is a true hero. He didn't give his life for oil or empire, he gave his life for something that intimately has to do with *our* freedom.

Lots of things work for Norway, and lots of other countries, that doesn't work for us. We are abnormal when it comes to the rest of the world. Now that may not always be a bad thing...but normal we are not.

A dual boot Windows 8.1 and Steam OS machine. I'm not really feeling the need for Android on a PC. Anyone else?

I setup an older version at work to sync important files between laptops. Version wasn't that far behind. We had nothing but trouble with it. If clients didn't hit the network or Internet, sometimes the clients would just lose all their settings. And client setup was not trivial, so I had to be the one to do it. Also, it would sometimes create a huge number of dupe files, which were versioned in order to stop collisions.

All in all, we ditched it for Goodsync. Not perfect, but it doesn't just one day up and lose all its settings for no apparent reason or create hundreds and hundreds of dupe files.