Perhaps the standard of 'success' differs between for-profit corporations and non-profits.
Despite ubuntu's being the most popular distro, canonical is at the moment something of a failure, and insofar as ubuntu is canonical's flagship product, ubuntu too is at the moment a (commercial) failure.

You do realize that 'sufficient' means 'enough', yes?

no no no, it was quantum insofar as it didn't pass continuously through the intervening numbers

While there is something to what you say about the final user experience being what matters, you are also a little too short sighted. Sometimes working around other people's crappy product is just too much for developers to be reasonably expected to do.
So to go with your example, say the electricity on one floor of your house goes out after the plumber came, and the plumber explains that it seems the incompetent ass that wired your house didn't bother running a negative line to that floor, but just twisted the negatives to a copper water line (which the plumber had to replace). This is not really the plumber's fault, and the plumber wouldn't reasonably let himself be held accountable for the bad result, but would tell you you need to go and bitch to the incompetent that ripped you off with the shoddy work in the first place.
A self-respecting developer will only fill up his own code base with ugly hacks to accommodated other poorly written programs to a certain point before he tells his users to bark up another tree.

I call bull.

This depends on what you are configuring.

if (!getconfig("alternate_behavior){
//defualt behavior
function_1();
} else {
//other behavior
function_2();
};

function_2() might be a quite completxe chunkof code that no one wants to write.

rofl. Wow, that was so customized I couldn't even tell it was windows!



That was sarcasm btw.

My gut reaction is the same, but at the end of the day, linux users' lives would be a lot easier if we have 10-30% market share on the desktop.
Why? Just because at that point we would have decent hardware support, games would be ported, Netflix would run on linux, and people would be aware to not use proprietary formats to exchange data.
But I agree, my gut reaction is that if it works for me, I don't care what other people use. And I'm sure as hell not going to make the mistake of evangelizing for OSS and then get stuck supporting it indefinitely.

I know this is gonna be taken as flame-bait but I love Ubuntu for that good-ole random, apparently routine update results in random breakage gig.
To be fair or course this is typical for any software that tries to stay cutting edge and push updates as soon as they come out: Updates inevitably break shit, if you like things to work all the time, don't update unless you need to.

What did I say that was wrong?
I merely pointed out that we don't need a conspiracy theory to account for general price alignment.
In fact that is the conclusion you reached:

Isn't that the whole idea of a market: Supply and demand?
Customers are willing to pay x for y.
Providers are willing to provide x for y.
Market reaches equilibrium at $x/y.
As I said to the reply above yours: I'm not saying that there is a great deal of competition, I'm merely pointing out that we don't need a conspiracy theory to account for the fact that prices are roughly aligned.

I didn't say there was enough competition, just that

With minimal competition prices will tend to stabilize.
I was merely pointing out that we don't need a conspiracy theory to explain why the major carries all have prices in the same ballpark.

Tethering the iPhone without the tethering package is--IIRC--already against the TOS.
I think charging for tethering on an account with a monthly limit is a shitty practice but given the way they run the show I think adding the charge on is almost certainly legal.

Nothing is keeping you from getting one: monthly prepaid is generally quite a bit cheaper than contract. Of course the phones suck, but for what you get it can be worth it.
Of course if you are paying by the minute you will be screwed.

Tinfoil hat indeed: The fact that the prices are tending to converge just shows that there is some competition in the market.