This. I've been telling people this even before the iPad came out - tablets are going to replace the clipboard.

Durable, waterproof tablets will. Clipboards and paper are still a shedload more failure-tolerant than electronics.

Still, it's getting close and some of the cases available are pretty tough.

Nobody forced him to change the name.

"Force" is maybe a strong word. It was one of the two options given, presented as if it might be undesirable, and it doesn't look like he wasted much time thinking about it.

Such a better solution (which would be: work more with the Debian Multimedia team, and make his repository not needed anymore, with everything directly available in Debian) have been attempted multiple times. Though he didn't seem to care doing that.

Actually, from my read of the situation, a better solution doesn't involve him at all. That's usually the case where you have intractable personalities associated with a problem.

Oh, man, it's difficult. Maybe I should just flip a coin?

Why not use the same criteria that the NSA has openly admitted their ops use...

Because I suspect their test is basically the same thing as a coin flip, except both sides of the coin are blacked out.

a pack of politicians with some...

Uh, yeah, you can stop right there. If you believe a politicians track record is relevant to the question of whether or not you should trust them, I have a duly elected public representative right over here who would love to give a patriotic citizen such as yourself a great deal on a surplus bridge...

I just don't know who to believe.

A techie who believes what he says enough to basically call out the most secretive, nastiest intelligence agencies of one of the most powerful countries in the world

or

a pack of politicians.

Oh, man, it's difficult. Maybe I should just flip a coin?

Reducing what happened with Christian Marillat to only a single thread is deceptive.

Probably. It doesn't change my point.

By forcing a name change, all they've accomplished is to piss off the people who value his service over any breakage that he manages to cause and making him even less likely to give a shit about what the Debian project wants or needs (assuming he could care even less than he already did).

People use his services to solve a problem with the core Debian distro, and apparently he runs his service well enough that people continue to rely on his stuff. The only way to "get rid of him" is to offer a better solution to the underlying problem, not to play games with names.

People are going to compose documents, spreadsheets, etc. on a tablet??

Maybe I need more coffee, can someone explain why anyone would want this?

Compose, no. Edit and update, yes.

Done right, it's actually a crazy powerful workflow.

Here's a trivial example... I do agility training with my dogs. I keep a spreadsheet of skills for each that I need to work on and add a check mark whenever I touch on that skill. I built it on my desktop using Google Drive, and keep a synced, offline version on my phone. Which means I can reference it and add that check mark when I'm actually training, or add a new skill to the list when I'm at class.

Now, is a spreadsheet the right tool for this sort of thing? Maybe a dedicated Android app would be better, but Google Drive is available on every device I care to use.

Obviously I'm assuming that this workflow is viable with whatever toolset Microsoft is offering. I have doubts that they could screw up something so simple, but lately I'm been amazed by their ability to do things exactly the least useful way.

The name actually caused real problems for Debian maintainers and users.

Hmmm... well, having scanned through that thread (read it folks, it's not that long), all I can say is that if that's the DPL-approved way of fixing problems, I don't want those idiots anywhere near my plumbing.

Public ultimatums are not an appropriate or effective technique to use on someone you don't have any functional control over.

1. Buy a phone with a removable battery. Cheap or expensive doesn't really matter.
2. Remove battery from phone.
3. Discard battery as appropriate for the type (it's probably classified as some sort of hazardous waste).

Your cellular phone is now 100% secure from government spying.

Where do you live? Are there many trains?

That's a good point. Canadian rail systems are somewhat... different. We don't have anywhere near as much passenger traffic, and we don't have dedicated passenger tracks outside of the subway systems (which I'm not going to count as "rail lines" in this discussion).

Freight complicates things, but not having freight doesn't really simplify the problem that much. There's a lot of other issues. Weather is a major one. Breakdowns are another big difference; I've never heard of a passenger train being cancelled due to engine failure.

Basically, there's a relatively high amount of schedule variability in planes which would simply not be tolerated by the rail industry.

The definitions don't get weird unless you are confused into thinking that tablets, smartphones, pdas, game consoles, etc, are something different than a PC with a different choice of software/peripherals.

But... but... they have to be. The industry analysts say so!

Even in a best-case scenario, where everyone headed to a specific destination lives along the same train line, I don't see this working out economically.

Even if it could work economically, the scheduling would be a bitch.

Trains don't really have a lot of flexibility in their schedules, particularly if they share the track with freight and whatnot. There's already a huge problem with people sitting around on tarmacs waiting for takeoff and that's just one mode of transportation. Mix in another mode with different constraints and I don't think it'll be pretty.

In other words, airport terminals and train stations are probably still needed to act as a passenger buffer.

All we need to do is redefine what a PC is (desktops, notebooks, and tablets)!

Exactly. I was under the impression that tablets were being counted under "mobile devices", mostly because of the Android/iOS platforms, with the tablet PC's being called "slates" for some reason. Admittedly, if you have someone starting to sell Android PC's the distinctions get a bit weird. And 10" Android tablets with attachable keyboard docks versus 10" Win8 tablets with attachable keyboard docks.

Er...

Actually, I think I'm starting to understand why Microsoft seems to be so utterly confused these days.

The majority of Americans appear to be okay with rent-a-cops groping sick children flying to Disneyland. As long as it's to fight terrorists.

It's like "to fight terrorists" is some kind of magical key phrase which turns off higher brain functions.