For me? Considering I'm not British...

Yeah, the British need you to tell them how to be taken seriously.

Yes, y7ou are exactly right. The solution to a bad problem is to make it worse.

Beyond that, hardware and software are entirely different beasts. It would be great if there were viable open source chips, but that doesn't mean I can build one. I could buy one from someone with enough money to manufacture them, but that is not a whole Hell of a lot different from buying a chip from Intel or AMD or Sun or Motorola....

You know it is not imperative to be specific in casual speech. Since everyone knows more or less what the writer meant, I see little merit in your argument.

GUI and CLI aren't mutually exclusive.

It's really not that hard to discern quality, especially if we are talking about furniture or kitchen ware. Wood and metal are definitively sturdier than consumer plastics, and the fewer attachment points, the sturdier they are (say, a chair carved out of solid wood vs a chair fitted together from several parts, or a knife made from one piece of metal). And I mean "real" wood and metal here -- not aluminum or particle board or other pressed woods. Ceramic and glass are also a good investment, unless you are really clumsy :)

Can you name some code that might illustrate this? It sounds interesting or at least amusing. I feel like I have come across really bad code in "simple" languages, code that would be easy to implement elegantly in a "complex" language, but I can't recall anything specific at the moment. I remember seeing a lot of truly bizarre code written in Apple BASIC back in the day (but then, some really cool hacks too).

No there isn't. But it does not follow that that screen will continue (?) to be most popularly found on a desktop PC than on a home media console. I couldn't confirm with a bit of Googling, but haven't PC gaming sales been on the decline for years? I'm not arguing for or against the merits of PC gaming vs console gaming, but I do wonder if the general populace hasn't spoken somewhat on that issue already (and they decide what hardware to buy).I really don't know, but that's the way I see it.

Sure, but that is a specialized application. The average user is not a graphic designer.

I think that is an argument for the death of desktops. I really don't see why people's lives will continue to evolve around "the desktop;" I really think people will continue to live mostly as they always have and that technology will evolve to suit peoples' lives, instead of the other way around, as we have now, while we still push a 40 year old paradigm of computer, the desktop being after all, merely a mainframe of yore (plus a killer graphics card) that sits on a desk.

Desktop tech now is merely the 80-column card ad nauseum ;)

No, not mobility. Just specialization whether it's mobile or not.

I agree with you. My stance is that the average user is not a person who must type frequently and at length. I don't know; it's just conjecture.

If "the web" as we know it is around in 10 years, I would feel like we as the tech community had slacked off.

You would "rather have one relatively versatile box," but would most people? If you don't need a desktop, those devices combined do not more fill an apartment than a desk + desktop + monitor + keyboard+ mouse + webcam + etc... I know as a developer I will continue to need a desktop for a long time, but I do not see why the average user would need one.

I mean for instance, what is more efficient between what most people do with their desktops now as opposed to a (stylized) vt100? Or even the electric typewriter (with a larger screen)? What drives a person to type on a desktop more than a netbook, for average use? It is safe to say that most people type little more than emails or short messages. How is "the web" as we know it better than specialized information retrieval devices?

As a programmer, I know the desktop will serve me well into the future. But I don't see the appeal for the average user.