If by "like they are with the desktop" you mean "not at all", then the answer is yes. If you mean something else, then then answer is "you're wrong".

Development of the Terminal application is underway and open to anybody who wants to contribute to it: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Touch/CoreApps/Terminal

And yes, there is a lot that hasn't been implemented yet. This is a Developer Preview, meant to give app developers something to play with and deploy Ubuntu SDK apps on, and also to make the source code available to anybody who wants to hack on it (and we hope contribute those hacks back to us).

It also doesn't have to take 120 hours to write.

I don't see how I was saying anything different.

I don't see how that factors into either my comment, or the one I was responding to. The fact is, regardless of how you connect to a server on a better network, the server will still be on a better network. Using VNC or SSH, RDP or RSH, it doesn't change the server's network bandwidth.

I configured Dialogic cards in Solaris from the command line almost a decade ago, so it is absolutely possible.

But that has nothing at all to do with the server having a GUI. You get exactly the same situation with GUI-less Windows, or GUI-less *nix.

Here are my primary uses of Ubuntu One:

1) Sync files that I might want to load from another computer of my mobile phone. I do this with my ebooks and FBReader on Android.

2) Sync Tomboy notes, which I can view from any computer or my mobile phone using Tomdroid. Having your notes available anytime, anywhere, is extremely useful.

3) Sync photos taken on my mobile phone to my laptop automatically. Syncing videos takes a little manual work, but I'm told that's being resolved.

You have to register an account with the Ubuntu One service before you can start using it, so it takes more user action than simply installing Ubuntu.

Except the Chinese aren't consumers, that's the biggest problem with their economy.

If we stop buying their lead-filled shit, they'll stop buying our shit-filled bonds.

If they did what to us, push information through our government mandated internet censorship filters? If China insisted that we should have freedom of the press, freedom of speech, and freedom to assemble? Yeah, we'd be pissed.

All you would really need is the fingerprint, which they could print out for you on a business card. Then when you connect the first time, you verify the fingerprint with the certificate being offered by the server, if they match you trust the certificate and go on your merry way.