Much like classic FORTH programming widh disk blocks. 1 BLOCK = 1K = 16 lines of 64 characters. Any word/function/definition needed to fit in 15 lines of text (The 1st of the 16 lines was used for comments). You had the ability to extend a definition beyond one screen of text but it was usually considered bad form. Typically if it would not fit, it was natures way of telling you that you did not undertand the problem well enough to code a proper solution. Clarity comes as you are forced to break things down into there smallest components.

Microsofts snot does not always turn to honey.

Zune ... failed

Play4Sure .. failed

WinCE .. failed

Win8 Mobile ... failing

WinRT ... failing

Surface ... failing

xbox/xbox 360 ... if you uncook the books and stack up all the costs and losses releated to the xbox line they are still a decade from turning a profit.

search ... still losing money after more than a decade.

MS is sure their future in the consumer market is tied to the 30% take the get with an app store. This means
1. The Modern Intreface must be maintained.
2. The legacy desktop and non-app store installation must go away.
3. The start button must go away to facilite point 1 and 2.
 

With 2 computers involved no advantage over rsync or Unison as far as speed of transfer. If you have 3 or more computers this is a better option. This works just like any other torrent. If a file is on computer A, and computers B and C need it. As B gets part of it and C gets a different part of it, then B and C can help update each other in the case of A's pipe being saturated. If you are trying to sync A, B, C, D, E, F, G and H, then it will be MUCH faster and much less complex to maintain.

Once you add in features like read only folders, the ability to exclude any one particular file or folder from being accessed, and being able to issue a good for 24 hours only key, you have a LOT of advantages over rsync. If you want sync copies of files on computer A to computer B, then rsync is the right tool for the job. If you need to do more than that, then maybe bittorrent-sync is the right tool for the job.

50k apps, but that is only if you count apps in other languages. Apps in english are around 35k and this is after MS promised 100k apps by Feb 1.

Not exactly a roaring success

To each his own.

I run fluxbox and I always have a dock on the right side of my screen where I run dock apps. http://dockapps.windowmaker.org/. On a wide aspect display I don't miss the 68 to 72 pixels they take up. At a glance I can see if anyone has IMed me and what time it was (wmmsg), switch keyboard layouts and see which one is active (wmkeys), So what me volume levels are and change/mute them (wmix), have my favorite net streaming radio stations available (pywmradio), have full control over audacious (wmauda), constantly monitor the status of 6 hosts (wmpiki), plus have some eyecandy with wmdots, wmcube, and wmxss.

And though Gnome 2 applets suck, I can assure you that old fashioned dock apps for the wharf, slit, dock or whatever you want to call it works quite well. You just do not get this level of information density with Unity or the Gnome shell. It is amazing what can be done with a 64x64 canvas.

Not all applets suck, not all DE's are created equal.

Here let me fix that for you

That however is not the case any longer. Thanks for the tip. To bad you decided to be snotty while helping me out at the same time.

Your missing the point. Piracy is a tax on "quality" and "popularity". If you have a "product" and you make money by selling it or some service related to it, you rely on the fact that the more people know about it, the more potential customers there are in the pool, the more actual product you will sell. There will be people who are not interesetd. There will be people who are intereseted but your product is not "good eough" for them. There will be people who are not willing to part with their money at the price point you have set. Then there is the final class of people. People that will pirate the prouduct if a way can be found to do so that is significantly cheaper than purchasing the product.

It is a tax on popularity. 10 people know aobut your product, 0% piracy, 0% profit. 1 million people know about your product, 1% piracy and some profit. 100 million people know about your product 2% piracy and even more profit. Much like a store with zero customers has zero shrinkage. Nothing is ever damaged by store employees or customers, nothing is stolen by store employees or customers. Shrinkage is a tax on doing business and handeling physical product in a retail space. Pircacy is a tax on doing business and handeling digital products.

98% of musicians have never been heard of by even 100,000 people. Obscurity is hurting their record sales far more than any pircacy would. I am not justifying piracy anymore than I am justifying shirinkage. However in the real world both are a cost of doing buisness. Both are a "tax" on being popular.

Piracy is a tax on being popular.

The less popular you are, the less of a tax it is.

It costs goodwill, it cost money, and it is for the most part not effective. What is effictive is to find a way to make money even with pircacy out there.

Read some posts at TechDirt. Find out if freeimum, or posting a comment or a product at thepiratebay or something else would work for your business.

There was an article about a director who made $60,000 last year on a project and spent $30,000 if it trying to deter piracy. She could have doubled her money by doing nothing. That was a case study. http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1999-12-29/

Yes they know they will loose a lot of us Google Reader users trust But not many people used Google Reader. The total number of Google Reader users who will drop all Google based products plus everyone the can influence to do that same thing, is not a very large number. If it costs them 100,000 users I would be surprised.

Yes, pulse works much better now. But it was the Pulse community improving pulse. It was not Ubuntu. Ubuntu came out. Took credit for Pulse, told the Ubuntu community that they would have the problems with Pulse fixed in a release or two. They did not fix it in a release or two, or three, or four.

It is typical of Ubuntu "iniatives". They announce some great linux feature that they probably borrowed from Fedora. Claim how bullet proof they will make it, address a few issues for a relase or two. What about the more difficult features to fix? Better hope they are addressed upstream. Because Ubuntu has announced a new set of iniatives they are going to focus on, leaving the current set abandoned.

My points are valid. I remember when Ubuntu took up each of these issues and adopted or created software to solve these issues.

Network manager is far from perfect. Try setting a static IP address for you wired adapter with network-manager. Or getting a working bridge going. Or having a wi-fi connection active upon booting a computer but before logging in. When Ubuntu adopted network manager and people filed bug reports and brought up those shortcomings. Ubuntu said it wold get taken care of in the next couple releases. They did not.

They said we would have grub to desktop graphic boots. Did they work on it for a bit. But even now, most desktops do not have a graphic boot from grub. Forget about that as an out of box experience with a Nvidia card. From not working in GRUB you move to not working in Plymouth Again Ubuntu did not create these technologies, but they did adopt them, set as a goal what they wanted to do with them. Then they fell short, got bug reports, promised they would fix it in a release or two. After a release or two, they announce another half baked initiative and move on.

Does pulse audio work? Yes, Does it still have issues? Yes. Can it be a pain to get software designed to work with OSS or ALSA working with it yes it can. I have every right to complain. Ubuntu promised 6 years ago when they adopted it that they would get it all fixed and sorted out. They have not.

You mention Unity and Upstart. Upstart still is not delivering on Ubuntu's promised sub 10 second boot times. Which by the way, were promised with graphic boot screens as well. Still not happening. What about 200,000 million users by 13.10? Again another half baked promise.

Ubuntu has done a lot. The Linux desktop is better off than it was in 2006. Ubuntu has helped improve some of these projects. But so far, every time Ubuntu announces an initiative and makes some big claim about what they will accomplish, they end up doing a half baked job when you look at how well they have met their objectives.

200 million users by October 2013
10 second boot times
Desktop looking better than OS X
100% graphical boots on all Linux systems.
Network manager as robust as OS X or Windows XP network manager
Pulse Audio as robust as OS X or Windows XP sound system.

I am not the one making these promises. Ubuntu is. They are the one telling us we should all hop on board and promote Ubuntu to all of our friends. All of this great stuff they are doing.

What I see are half-baked half-fulfilled promises. Being told we are a community, and the minute the majority of us don't like something like the close button being moved to the left side of the window, or Unity. we are told Mark is in charge and it is not a community decision. I see the word Linux purged from anything Ubuntu is involved with. I am tired of being lied to and treated like the ugly girlfriend that Ubuntu want to have sex with but will not hold her hand in public.

This will go nowhere. Cananonical has "completion" issues. Look at their past track record on linux. The focus on a feature for a release or two and then either declare it done or stop talking about it. They were going to make everything easy, printing, wifi, audio. Pulse Auido is still far from perfect and network manaeger still has issues. Then we have 10 second boot times, better looking that Mac, Desktop notifications, Wayland and 200 million users by October 2013.

Back in October of 2011 I predict the death of Wayland on my blog which I almost never post to. http://elder-geek.blogspot.com/2011/10/ubuntu-is-failure.html

Unity is still here, but instead of fixing it for the desktop, more work will go into making it run on other platforms. I love Linux with all of my heart. But Ubuntu is so preditible on how they are going to fail. They never complete anything that they start. Linux will be safe in the long run from the Distro that strives to remove the word "Linux" from their users minds.

Five year support on LTS is a killer feature.

If you want to use .deb packages and would like up-to-date packaegs for software like libreoffice and firefox then Ubuntu is the way to go.

Drop 12.04 on the machine, and you have a system that will be easy to keep updated till 2017. With the option of upgrading on 2014 if it looks good. There are a lot of PPAs out there to keep many poplular LTS software applications up to date.

Cypher did it

I was surprised with the problems students were having with programming at the local community college. Isuse with cause and effect, sequencing. If I you gave them the sequence of opening the door, walking through it, then closing the door, they would be able to immediately spot sometghing out of sequence. However if you asked them to add some numbers, divied to compute the average then print the results, it seemed 60% of the class could not understand what the sequence should be or why it mattered.