There are many services that tackle parts of Skype's functionality, but I have yet to see one that tackles them all. Not only does Skype to chat and client-to-client video conferencing, but it also gives you access to a global POTS gateway both outgoing and inbound, and is available to customers outside of the USA. Viber, Line, WeChat, Google and tox don't have the functionality to take away Skype's business. So we remain stuck with Skype, despite their ever worsening service and dubious allegence.

Ubuntu Kylin is pretty viable. Ubuntu 14.04 specially localized for China, produced by Canonical in partnership with one of the (many) ministries. By bringing in the experts, you avoid all the problems you cite, and it is open source so a Chinese group can take the drivers seat and salvage any lost pride whenever it is viable.

China is huge and the government is huge. IIRC they have had several customized linux variants in development simultaneously (of which we generally know of Red Flag because it had the coolest name).

The other gaping hole is that Amazon are going to screw their product suppliers so much that there won't be any supply.

"At which point the screws can be tightened indefinitely. And after a while, there will be no more Charlie Stross novels because I will be unable to earn a living and will have to go find a paying job."

Yeah, it would be a fantastic business model for Amazon to kill off the supply of quality books.

Every Open Source opearting system has support for as long as you want to keep making fixes for it. It isn't like China lacks people capable managing this process and patching the code. And if they somehow can't, it isn't like Canonical or Red Hat or a hundred other companies wouldn't do it for them for peanuts compared to Microsoft licences.

My landlord owns the fixtures. I own the lightbulbs.

Line took over nearly completely from WhatsApp in my region.

Right, few people care about the init scheme. systemd would have had much less of a battle for acceptance if it was just an init scheme. The major objections seemed to be about all the other stuff it takes over and plans to take over.

Funny? Insightful. We knew what would happen, and Australia voted them in anyway.

... and if the 3D universe is just a projection of a 2D surface, then the Flat Earthers where right all along :-O

If the genes have been patented, I'm sure there are lots of stolen babies out there just waiting for a lawsuit.

No, you do what normal delivery people do and leave it at the security desk. Or with the guy hanging around outside the front whose job it is to wave his arms at taxis and move the beggars on. Or the drone landing bay the building installed on the second floor terrace balcony because the tenants wanted it. Or maybe they actually won't be leaving packages in random locations, and instead require you to actually be there to acknowledge the delivery. Maybe there are solutions to problems.

I think the first place to get a system like this will be Tokyo though. The culture loves robots, and I imagine some depots could service 10 million people in that 10 mile service radius. Not only would you deliver your own product, but you would steal almost all the existing document and small item delivery market.

Really? A brief response made on Linux *developers* mailing list hurts Linux an immense amount?

If you want to see who is hurting Linux, look at who is publishing this click bait garbage.

Right now you can run more AAA games on a Linux box with Steam than a Playstation 4.

It will be interesting to see if that remains the case over the next few years.