Still what, does it have to do with "desktop environment". It should be a core OS library with plugins that every application can use.

For that you have user interface guidelines and standard widget libraries. In case of Linux the guidelines should be published by standard bodies or by Linux distros themselves. Ubuntu for instance makes good job making things consistent.
Microsoft, Google, and Apple do provide standard widgets in their OSes and UI guidelines. They also enforce them to various degree. Personally I don't want to live in a nazi (Goodwin law bingo!) like world where only one "UI contract" is enforced on everyone.
It is true that programmers still produce "skinned" program abominations started by "why can't you die already" Winamp. That is the cost of living in a free world.
Most Linux GUI programs do use standard widget libraries like QT and GTK and to some degree follow UI guidelines. The additional theming can be added by the user or distro in form of theme packs.

I never quite understood the attraction. What exactly is this whole GNOME or KDE package for? Granted, there are some decent programs that came with them, but do they really require all the extra baggage of 10 layers of crappy libraries with fancy names? Both KDE and GNOME are just pointless empire building exercises by bunch of people who want to force their way of computer interaction on everyone else.

The OS should do one thing, provide services to programs. On UI level that includes managing windows and provide some way of task switching. Widget library is nice too since it saves some time for programmers, but it doesn't really have to be part of OS. On Windows this functionality is pretty much built in to the point of being (almost) non replaceable. Thankfully on Unix one has a choice of window manager, task switchers/panels, widget libraries etc. The users should be able to mix and match them to fulfill their needs. Some distros like Ubuntu may make these choices for the users that do not care much what they use. Where do mega projects "we gonna takeover your computer and make you do things our way" like GNOME and KDE fit? Nowhere, and finally people realize that.

The only thing that can be done with these projects is to salvage any good apps they have created and make them into independent projects. There is less and less to salvage though because GNOME managed to create dumber and dumber versions of the same things (like image viewers or browsers or file managers etc).

For instance, why would anyone ever use web browsers that GNOME has created (is the latest one Epiphany or something?) when there is Firefox, Chrome or Seamonkey made by people who know what they are doing?

There are some nice projects like LXDE, and to lesser degree XFCE which are actually helpful, they put together bunch of tools, most of them optional, and give you quite a lot of choice. Although XFCE is getting fatter and fatter.

I have been using 7" original Galaxy Tab running CyanogenMod 6 (then 7) as my phone. It fits just fine in back jeans pocket although seating with it is not very comfortable. I use it less now after I got Galaxy Note (CM9), but it 7' is still the best format for reading books. 10" inch Galaxy Tab just sits in it's cradle, hardly every used.

And guess what, there is plenty of smaller smartphones if this is what you want. Get Xperia Mini, and back off from my Galaxy Note. There are plenty of different devices for everyone. If you don't need bigger screen don't buy it and let the market decide. And it did decide, Galaxy Notes are selling pretty well - see nice progress ion 2, 5, 7 million devices: http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/03/galaxy-note-sales-so-far/ http://www.bgr.com/2012/03/28/the-phablet-is-a-hit-samsung-galaxy-note-sales-top-5-million/ http://www.smartcompany.com.au/information-technology/050030-samsung-reveals-galaxy-s-and-galaxy-note-sales-figures.html

sign up for any other online service like video conferencing etc.
Create account Company_X_employee_2843753875 and use it for work purposes ONLY. Nobody is forcing you to use it at home, do they?
When you leave the company you give them the account and password so there is no BS like this http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16338040

After I got my NEX-5 first when it showed up on BHPhoto my K20D with a collection of about 10 lenses was gathering dust in my closet for like a year. I ended up sending it to my dad (Pentax user as well). But he got NEX-5 recently too ...
So I have been using dSLRs for several years now and I find it very refreshing to use NEX-5. I don't see it as dead end either. Lens availability is becoming much better, 3rd parties start supporting it as well, starting with Tamron 18-200. I got 40m waterproof enclosure for it for like $150 where one for dSLR would cost me 10x that. I miss my Sigma 70-200/2.8 which used to be my "walk-around" lens when hiking, but in the end I hardly ever used it wide open. And NEX-7 and Zeiss 24/1.8 is almost available now, which make a deadly combo (deadly like in my wife killing me when I will buy it).
AF is not slower compared to my K20D (which wasn't particularly fast) and I am OK with that. But then, I don't get any front or back focus issues either which constantly plague dSLRs. Plus NEX has a nice feature to adjust with DMF and contrast highlight. And while dSLRs viewfinders are nice (I used split prism focus matte and 1.2x magnifier) they kind of suck on APS-C dSLRs and they do not really show how the image will look. I find LCD preview much better idea that does't require closing one eye and losing situation awareness. I do sometimes wish I had EVF though.
In the end the success of mirrorless cameras is speaking for itself. They are hot sellers and they are here to stay. In the end they will probably completely replace low end dSLRs and bite serious piece of high end dSLRs.
I know I am not going back to dSLR.
BTW, I hate Sony as a company, but I am weak, NEX is just too good.

This is very impressive, I really applaud this initiative by German Greenpeace. I wish they did such constructive things in other countries as well.
Same for GreenFreeze effort. But why is it that only Germans do something positive?

So show me the clean energy research and development that Green Peace does.
If they care about the planet so much maybe they should invest some money, hire some scientists, develop new technologies and fix something for a change instead of protesting pointlessly.
So maybe for once they could take all this money from donations and build say a windfarm and sell clean electric energy to people?
But wait, I bet they are protesting those as well.

I am actually in process of removing the Gnome crap from my desktop Gentoo box.
My laptop was always running Openbox + LXpanel and finally I realized that I gnome-panel doesn't really have anything special.
I don't understand what the hell do I need this "desktop environment" for. I need a window manager, launcher and task switcher, do I really need a megaton of crappy software to do that? Not to mention that the whole "desktop" metaphor is beyond stupid, because I see desktop for about 5 seconds after logging in before I start first program.

I build Gingerbread for single device (CM7.1 to be specific) pretty often and it takes 20+ minutes to build.I use quad core Phenom 955, 8GB RAM and SSD.
Somehow I doubt ICS will need considerably more time to build.
I know people are building Android in reasonable time on lesser spec machines.
This is probably a spec of shared build server they use at Google.

I feel your pain, especially if you don't have transparent proxy on your network, such simple technology is apparently outside of grasp of lots of IT organizations.

Here is the link http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=13877540#post13877540
It requires root and iptables support. It automatically starts proxy when you connect to access point and remembers which proxy to use for which AP SSID.

TransProxy is pretty good too http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=766569 but you have to switch it on and off manually.

from TFA: There’s no one in the Defense Department with his hand on the network switch. In fact, there is no one switch to speak

Maybe it's for the better. If there was a central control of whole network it would make it a great target for attack.

N900 is a great device but it has no AT&T 3G frequencies and no proper Exchange support (provisioning, certificate authentication) and the arrogant attitude of the Nokia devs that worked on Exchange support.
The othe problem it has is the fact that Nokia usually puts about half of the memory the system needs on all N devices.
64MB on N770 was a joke, then 128MB on N800/810 was barely to keep the OS so the browser blows up on any bigger web page. Then they put 256MB in N900 which is still way too little. Their solution of putting swap in flash memory is really weird too. And N900 shipped with 600MHz CPU when everyone else's flagship devices were shipping with 1GHz.