In a way, it's alright.

It is needed to help spread awareness that there are few distributions like motherships out there - whichever, Debian or Fedora - which we should be respectful of and grateful to for all the fun we have on a derivative product like Ubuntu - which has been in the news for all the wrong reasons of late.

You got the analogy wrong.

Developers from GNOME or Banshee -> Guys in Metallica who play or tune drums & guitars (They don't just clean 'em)

Canonical -> Record label company putting a shiny box on the recording (They're not Metallica)

.. this is one time we've got to stand up and salute this guy, here on Slashdot.

Sorry again. Not the article, but the event itself.

Please ignore this article if it's been discussed in the past on Slashdot already. This article seems to be pretty old.

... I take a minimum of 1.5 hours of work conference calls everyday. The average is higher than 2.0

But I actually prefer this mode of communication at work (especially with screen-sharing) as we have no doubts about when or where we're meeting.

It also almost allows me to work & think in solitude, which is the most effective situation for me.

But personal life is a whole another world. Using the phone for socializing with friends or family is a pain (whether unavoidable due to distance/means etc or not)

...Facebook wants people to be lame on Facebook and not Lamebook.

...that Facebook tried to threaten action and, in doing so, suggest they had something in common to lose to Lamebook.

Forget what Lamebook has to gain from this. People are going to see Facebook and Lamebook side by side in the story and say "Facebook feels Lamebook is a threat? Did Lamebook offer something Facebook felt threatened about losing?" What they should have done is to ignore Lamebook from the start. Its the best way to discredit them.

That point had come months ago with relatively slower phones but by no means are we at the point of no divergence.

Android needed to be customized a lot more at the beginning to be optimal on the hardware it ran on.

Android is not exactly common for every carrier/device combination with so many versions floating around. (Not to mention the varied GUI experiences)

And this craze of being the first or the fastest with software on smart phones and everything I mentioned above is going to stymie eventually to give way to a search for a consistent experience, where developers can target a single, predictable platform / marketplace. (It's the applications, stupid! Not the operating system!)

I am not vouching for MS, and I am not writing Android off. But I don't think we get how early we are in this race and how fast MS can catch up given its reach into the OEM ecosystem and the enterprise.

Walk through the offices any of the Fortune 2000 companies of today. On the ground, Microsoft has a death grip on IS infrastructure and the desktop.

People are underestimating Microsoft's trajectory in the mobile computing space.

Remember how Window 3.1 and Windows 95 took off? It needed the hardware to reach that level in order for people to adopt the GUI based desktop in enterprise as a mainstream device and not just for the book keepers and the odd manager (and of course enthusiasts in the consumer space).

Today's phones are reaching that tipping point in hardware maturity (1GHz processors and 1GB RAM) where a common software layer (the operating system) is an acceptable overhead and people can expect to do more than just text and email.

We're approaching a situation where the PC type software-OEM model is viable in the mobile space - and Microsoft has proven before that it can wield partners in such an environment to a common goal unbelievably well. And then the management of the enterprise sales.

But the problem Microsoft is now seeing is that not as many articles are being written about it as before in the press.

I guess Facebook with the farmtards, Google and Apple just have sexier stuff to report on. But that is mindshare.

In 1985, Microsoft was a $15M company, and Apple was at $300M. Things turn around. There have been several articles in the past where Microsoft has been cited as a late entrant into a space only to dominate it later. (leave antitrust out of this argument, the means are not the point of the discussion)

To call it a "dying" brand would only apply in reference to the public's short memory.

.. isn't an increase in functionality and thus the addressable attack area natural evolution of any technology ?

It's true that the HTML5 spec is huge on functionality but they've put in some very simple Unix type philosophies to achieve security.

The suggestion should not be to decrease HTML5 functionality - the web can't stand still on that - but to increase focus on and mitigate security threats through more policies in the HTML5 spec.

The increased functionality also allows developers to do away with some crazy workarounds (read security loop holes) to get some generally expected experiences on their web page.

Plus, as it has been pointed out earlier, the surface area for Flash and other plugins will also come down. So while the net surface area for attacks increase, the implementations are going to be a lot more secure by design.

.. of terrorists who are planning attacks are embedded in every corner of India.

It is several times worse than all of the spy or terrorist networks in the US combined.

When you're in the situation India is, already with the incompetent politicians hindering critical issues like national security, you'll realize you don't want an external blocker to your ways of preventing terrorism.

..before someone calls for an raid of McAllisters property saying he's been paid off by Oracle? :)