The "everyone should run our open (tm) software" plea. I'm not falling for it. No customer is demanding "cloud portability" because customers don't want to change ISP, ever. I just don't think portability of whole VM networks will ever be feasible on a technical level. Even if you could shuffle IPv4 addresses and masses of data around the whole internet between providers without down time, there's no incentive for ISPs to cooperate, or willingly turn themselves into a cheaper sub-brand of Rackspace. It would instantly put them at a competitive disadvantage. Your entire business model controlled by a competitor? You can go to Parallels for that; their software works out of the box, it will gladly migrate ISPs for you, and the per-customer fees are reasonable!

The customers who have sussed cloud portability already have it through tools like puppet, rigid version control, or a tightly-specced development environment supported by lots of ISPs (PHP, Java, .net - ish). The customers that don't have a portable setup won't magically get it through an "open" hosting API, they will be lashed to their current provider as they always have been.

However, the basic gameplay mechanics are just so-so. It's just a physics simulation. The real problem is that there is such a massive luck factor involved. For example, when someone beats a difficult "level", what is the chance that they can actually reproduce their success in the exact same way? Pretty much impossible.

I think this just is the definition of a game you suck at ;-) And I think the reason it's successful isn't that it's luck based at all - sure you experiment, you learn, but eventually you succeed at clearing a level, and a skilled played _can_ repeat their performance. It's not unpredictable, but you do need skill. I bet 1980s-you would have liked it. It's like a streamlined Lemmings. It's definitely a classic, and apart from the reliance on touch screen, not a modern game design at all.

If you want to grumble about an evil modern game design, look at Jetpack fucking Joyride. It's skill-based, but makes the absolute minimum actual game in favour of a zillion metagames designed to bore you into "buying" progress. THAT is Satan's gaming, designed to be addictive, shallow and will take a few dollars off you as it goes. I'm sure there are worse examples.

For fuck's sake, sorry, the base price is £220 not £320.

Yeah sorry I spotted the disparity too late. It's an ASUS 1025CE which has a spec of 1GB RAM and 320GB HDD, for £320. It's upgradeable to 4GB RAM, but because they forgot to cut a whole in the underneath, you have to take the bastard thing apart. The SSD was an Intel 80GB I had spare which I think goes for about £70-80 these days.

Linux i386 installs fine, but the "Cedar View" Intel graphics drivers are still hard to find packaged. The rest of the hardware worked with Ubuntu 12.04 just fine though.

Oh I misread ... obviously $250 is nearly half of £300, ish. Am still surprised that the ARM doesn't stand for better battery life though.

I tried to request an invitation for my self-hosted address. "That email system is not supported". Thanks. So it's only for people that have more than one account on the above list apparently.

For £300 I got an Atom-based netbook with an 80GB SSD, 4GB RAM, slightly smaller screen and 9 hour battery life. It can run Chrome, and a lot of other things. What's the ARM bringing to the Chromebook, if it can't give far better battery life?

Oh, the old "government is the *problem*" crazy.

I'm sure you only drive on roads you paved yourself, in a house you built, eating food you grew in your own garden.

You probably make an exception on books though, and read Ayn Rand instead of only books you wrote yourself :-).

Yeah, I'm such an evil collectivist. I even pay taxes ! (and I want to pay *MORE TAX*, how about that for a scare story to tell your kids at night :-).

That's funny. I feel *exactly* the same way about public fire service. Why should *I* pay to subsidize the lazy bums who have fires in their houses. Makes my taxes go up - takes more money out of my pocket. After all, I'm sure I could negotiate with the fire-service people after my house is on FIRE to get the rate down. It's not like it's a service everyone needs, right ?

Sigh. Libertarians. What *would* we do for comedy without them...

> Jeremy Allison: I don't know how you can even live in the same country as morons who truly believe this shit.

Sad to say....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willie_Sutton :-).

> As an american, i can't imagine being made bankrupt and
> homeless by healthcare costs, That just doesn't happen, but
> good argument i suppose.

Just doesn't happen, eh ?

From that well known communist daily, Bloomberg's BusinessWeek:

http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/jun2009/db2009064_666715.htm

You may be right wing, but you don't get to have your own facts. The real world always impinges.

Sure, I can believe as an NHS nurse she had lots of horror stories about how broken the system is. I can tell you lots of horror stories about how broken every company I've ever worked for is :-).

But (and I'm sorry to hear she passed away so you can't ask here) I very much doubt that she would have preferred to impose the US-style system on her patients, had she had experience of both systems.

I live in the US, and I'd pay double my taxes just to get a working NHS over here. Having experience of both systems I know what I'm talking about. It's the peace of mind.

If you've never had it, and only lived in the US system you won't really understand what I'm talking about. It's like trying to describe color (note the spelling there :-) to a blind person. But I'll try.

Imagine just NOT HAVING TO WORRY about healthcare or costs. Seriously - NOT HAVING TO WORRY ABOUT IT AT ALL. Ever. That's what the NHS brings to people's lives.

People over there complain about it, but that's because they also don't understand how truely disfunctional the US system is. They (people in the UK) have no concept of being made bankrupt and homeless by healthcare costs. They just can't imagine it.

I just read your message again...

"I just lost all my savings paying my wife's health costs"

Wow. Just, wow. The fact you consider losing all your savings preferable to a National Health Service is, well..., just really *sad*.

I know it's true, because I live here. But I'm always astounded when I'm reminded how Americans have absolutely no concept of what a civilized society really looks like.