The cognitive dissonance here is amazing. All of the posts in support of Google included at least one, if not multiple, of the following items:

1. Suppot for the notion of an enforceable Terms Of Service agreement;
2. Support for the notion of non-free-as-in-beer (ad-supported) and non-free-as-in-freedom (unavailable for download) content;
3. Support for monopoly-like use of dominance by Google in streaming video (YouTube) to hurt competition in a different market (smartphones)

Next time someone on Slashdot complains that Microsoft updates the Exchange and AD suite every couple years for supposedly "no good reason" and expects people to pay for it, I'm going to point them to your post and have you defend MS from a security and maintenance standpoint, okay? Also, I'm pretty sure MS offers paid support contracts exactly like what you describe.

Also, your argument is a total strawman. We're talking about Exchange, the best and best-supported non-cloud email service in the last 15 years. If that ever changes, you might have a point, but it doesn't right now and hasn't for the entirety of this "cloud revolution." You can't throw out generic "the cloud is better" arguments that might apply to some random crap software and hope they stick to something like Exchange and AD.

The OP was addressing cloud security. If a company runs an internal email server, it doesn't care what Microsoft or Google do with cloud security, since it's not using their cloud services. Securing its email system falls pretty much on the company, not the cloud provider. A part of that security is the security of the software itself, so of course I would still want Exchange security updates, but other than that, I don't give a crap how good the security of those cloud services are. I only care how good my own company's network security is.

Also, I fail to see how being stuck with a closed source proprietary product is any worse than being stuck with a software-as-a-service provider.

Why do I care what investments anyone is making in cloud security if I buy Exchange and run it on my own local email server? In that case I would only care about what investments my own company is making in security, not what Microsoft or Google are doing.

When applied to music, the hordes of Imaginary Property people scream that musicians should give away their recorded bits for free (since they can't be owned anyway) and make revenue on live performances. Software-as-a-service with a subscription fee is the exact analog of a live performance for software. You want to use the software, you pay for the live performance.

I guess I don't see why the Imaginary Property crowd isn't ecstatic about this. Companies have realized that trying to restrict who owns their software bits is stupid, because someone will just pirate it. So instead, they aren't doing that anymore, and they are charging only if you actually use their service. Wasn't this the goal of the Imaginary Property crowd - no censorship on bits? (Or was it that they wanted music for free?)

Please, Imaginary Property crowd, now tell me how this is broken.

If you think that the main point of this stunt was to proclaim about how piracy ruins game studios, have fun! Plonk.

You are reading way too much into it. The fact that the "defect" that they put into their cracked game itself has to do with piracy is likely simply a hilarious meta-reference to piracy of games in general. They could easily have just had the game stop working after a certain amount of time, or had a giant pink scorpion show up and devour your in-game studio and its employees, or whatever. If you're discounting this entire experiment on the basis that in your opinion, their cracked, bugged copy of the game is inaccurate, you're the one who is the fool.

No, you've completely misunderstood what I said. I did not argue that due process be suspended for this individual for all time. Now that they have him, he gets due process.

While he was being pursued, the Boston police would have been justified in shooting and killing him. Many people on Slashdot seemed to be outraged that this could happen and were equating the use of force while apprehending this criminal to drone strikes and invasions of privacy. That is what is completely wrong.

This person is a suspect for the marathon bombings, but was a clear and present danger to the public and to the police during the pursuit, and the police would have been justified in using violence against him. Of course they didn't want to kill him, because they want to question him. But he did not deserve a no-violence arrest because of his actions during the arrest.

The Slashdot knee-jerk reaction that this criminal (yes, criminal, not suspect) deserved to be apprehended with no use of force is incorrect.

The criminal shot at and threw pipe bombs at the police as he was being pursued. He has a right to due process for the marathon bombings, but not for the crimes of shooting and bombing cops while being pursued (and the pursuit was justified, due to a preponderance of evidence against him for the marathon bombings). He was a clear and present danger during the pursuit and committed those crimes against the police while they were attempting to arrest him. If he wanted a guarantee of no violence to himself, like so many Slashdotters like you think he deserved, he should have not basically caused himself to be caught red-handed shooting at and bombing cops - he should have surrendered. But he did not do so.

A $200 pocket phone still cannot do a lot of things a full desktop PC could do a decade ago.

I would say "Most people's needs are minimal." The distinction is very important. Most people have some computing needs that cannot be met by touch-only input and a slow processor (i.e. smartphone and/or tablet).

There are even some people who have many computing needs that cannot be met by devices like that.

I think the percentage of people who can meet all of their computing needs with a smartphone and/or tablet, and who will not ever need a notebook or desktop computer, is still low enough that calling Microsoft Windows dead is just silly.

Did you look at the content of that table instead of just the title? There is no data for Apple listed in that table. (Presumably because worldwide, Apple is not among the top 5 vendors of PCs). The only data for Apple is in the second table, which I'll quote the title of for you:

Top 5 Vendors, United States PC Shipments, First Quarter 2013 (Preliminary) (Units Shipments are in thousands)

There is no worldwide data for Apple sales in either report. Both reports contain worldwide data for non-Apple PCs, but that's not what we were talking about, were we?

Well the IDC data saying Mac sales were down 7.5% is for the U.S. market only as well. So forget point b) above, as both reports are for U.S. data.

No, that's just incorrect - here are the actual reports.

The IDC report says Mac sales were down 7.5%:

http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS24065413#.UWZPFVfJLz9

There is a different report, by Gartner, that says U.S. Mac sales were up 7.4%, but a) that's not the IDC report and b) it's not worldwide data, it's for the U.S. market only:

http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2420816

Christ. In this particular story, the comments are going to be discussing alternatives, because that's pretty much what the article asks about. If you don't want to talk about alternatives, and instead want to just sit around until someone else invents them, why on Earth would you bother reading the comment section of this particular article? Just to make snarky posts and degrade the overall quality of the discussion?