Norway, where Opera is currently based, is a strong rule-of-law country and their legislation seems mostly compatible with EU Data Protection directive. So yes, I do think a Chinese company buying off Opera is way worse than before.

Too bad. I only recently discovered Opera on Android, and have been using it ever since because it has an in-built ad-blocker. Google will probably never deliver an ad-blocker to Chrome for Android because Google is an advertising company and it would be about shooting themselves in the foot. But I will any day choose a bit slower and more annoying browsing experience over installing Chinese spyware on my phone. So long, Opera.

[X] YES I would like take advantage of my limited, one-time special offer to have InstantComputerFixer++ Pro and InstantComputerFixer++ Pro BrowserToolBar installed for FREE alongside this software!

It's probably a misnomer to call this a backdoor or virus. The users probably need click through some EULA where they give the company permission to do as they see best with the user's computer. Computers are powerful machines and a great deal of users are just too ignorant and should not be allowed the install code downloaded from the Internet on their computers.

FUD. Just the standard in spreading climate hysteria. It might scientifically proven but the green loonies are still the biggest PR group. Which is great for the climate change deniers because it makes their job so easy.

Android is built on the Linux kernel so actually if you hook a keyboard, a mouse or such in the micro-USB slot on your phone it should just work out of the box. I don't think there's that much consumer interest for hooking up a 10x sized a keyboard to a smartphone though. It wouldn't be a big push for Google to bring out a dongle-sized concept PC based on Chromium OS or Android if such devices prove popular, however.

And if you are willing to hack some there's of course the business-card sized Raspberry PI that has decent ARM CPU, HDMI out and USB in that can be flashed with your favourite Linux distro, Android or Win 10.

I think it's the very goal of Microsoft to blur the line between "desktop" and "mobile". Case and point: Windows Store (which will now be a much more prominent part of the OS) uses the same kind of app permission and sandboxing model as Android and iOS.

Cost and availability of hardware? While the original platform/OS might be closed, it might be possible to root it and get raw access to the underlying hardware. With original Xbox this was super easy, since it was essentially a cheap Intel PC in a console box. There was a very lively hobbyist culture around the original Xbox with many people installing Linux on it to convert it to an affordable HTPC.

You are absolutely wrong. Nokia only sold its phone manufacturing business to Microsoft. However, Nokia is actually a conglomerate that currently also operates in e.g. networking (the Nokia Siemens Networks division, now a fully-owned subsidiary of Nokia) and mapping + location technology (the "HERE" brand). Previously, they have also operated in cable, television, Personal Computer, car/bicycle tire and rubber boot manufacturing just to name a few other areas. Few people know about these other Nokias, but it's actually a really old company (founded already in 1865). The Nokia car tyre business is currently known as Nokian Tyres, and is one of the world's leading winter tire manufacturers in the world (it's get cold and icy in Finland, you know).

If you read about the development history of the MeeGo/Maemo line, it was only kept alive as a hobbyist/freak project. This also allowed it the rapid development cycle, unlike the other projects inside Nokia that were over-managed. At the end of the day, the management however preferred Symbian and later WP over that line. I guess they didn't see it as suitable for businesses or something.

That was only the last nail in the coffin. The company still had its own strategy and vision before 2011. However, the seeds of doom were sown during the early 2000s when phone sales were excellent and the company hired lots of middle management. When Apple came out with iPhone, the company could not react because proper R&D had become almost impossible due to the management overhead. When Nokia went to MS for Elop and WP, they already knew they were doomed as they had no competive product of their own.

This is probably just about MS laying off all the useless middle management from ex-Nokia divisions. Nokia failed because they had practically unrestricrted growth of middle management at the expense of R&D. This diet is necessary. Under the original Finnish management Nokia had no balls to lay off anybody. Finland is unfortunately still largely a 1960s-style socialist market economy where layoffs mean labor union strikes and the emloyer being deemed socially irresponsible.

Definitely not. This might have been so in the 1990s and early 2000s. But Microsoft is nowadays a major kernel contributor and has been offering Linux as a first-class operating systemn on the Azure cloud computing platform since at least 2010.

At least according to Ars this is much less. It's just about killing specific kind of SW patents. Crucially, it still allows patents that "improve the functioning of the computer itself".