WiseWeasel is VERY expert about Maemo, and it's competitors. (I bow to the Wise one.) But IMO, Nokia's current product (N900) and it's short-term pipeline have a big hardware issue effecting the UI, and putting Qt into the Maemo software "stack" entices software developers into making the world of Nokia Apps a lot less consistent, rather than more consistent.

The Nokia hardware platform problem is multitouch. Resistive touchscreens are much less expensive to build, and multitouch is possible on such technology- but like the early days of LCD TV trying to compete with Plasma, the behavior is manifestly worse. Just like the old LCDs did a terrible job with motion, the current resistive screens do a really terrible job of recognizing a user's touch. Even a single-touch action gets mishandled or unrecognized from time to time. It's a hardware problem, and IMO Nokia's premier product is behind the competition in touchscreen. Resistive screens may catch up Capacitative screens in the future, or Nokia might switch in a future product... but right now, even the N900 is frustrating to use, and this is the main reason why.

The software problem is upcoming, not yet even present in Maemo v5. As you all know, Nokia bought Trolltech, the makers of the 'Qt' graphics toolkit. Nearly all of 'Qt' is now open source code, LGPL. (The switch to this particular license, granting un-revocable and very liberal terms others to use as they please, was a Nokia choice, subsequent to the purchase.) Software developers were, and are, thrilled by the possibility of "write once, run anywhere" graphical applications. And I think that this was an important reason for Nokia's acquisition, even if the main reason had been a defensive purchase of TrollTech's toolkit 'intellectual property' before it got bought by someone else and patented/re-licensed under nasty terms by someone else.I'll guess that both considerations were considered to be extremely important.

But Maemo 6 inherits two GUI tookits: It's own, which is fairly complete but totally non-portable; and QT v4, which is beautifully designed, but not yet sufficiently complete, not even for computer applications. (You need to provide tons of widgets yourself, either by writing them raw or using another toolkit to "help out" with additional elements. KDE and the Maemo 6 Graphics Library can theoretically utilize qt elements as "lower layer" items, but it's hard to do it all from inside Qt-- it just isn't there yet.) KDE uses Qt very heavily, as an underlying "layer". Maemo use of Qt brand new, and IMO you're better off using the legacy elements. Instead of instantiating a Qt window, with it's controls, you're going to want to create a Maemo window, in the "old" way. After you've committed yourself to which kind of App Window it is, all the child controls and methods are totally different source code. So, if you want to create an App for both desktop KDE and Symbian phones, your code grows into a huge jungle of #ifdef MAEMO .... #elif KDE .... #endif macros, nearly as thick and nasty as using common source code for Linux/X11 and win32 implementations of your program. Development and maintenance of such stuff isn't easy or fun, so SOME people will try to code using just QT-- and I'm afraid that their Apps might end up looking a lot different. Two UI's for the end user, in different programs on the same device, would IMO be a disaster for Nokia.

I don't think the problem comes from departmental infighting, I think that it's more a question of not-enough-time. It takes time, LOTS of time, to unify those toolkits, and everyone who already wrote something (the writers of KDE4; the writers of KDE Apps; all the writers of Maemo Apps) depends on the groups of developers (i.e., the writers of Qt and the writers of the Maemo graphics tookit) not to break their existing GUI code. The time and money simply wasn't there for such an enormous project. I won't be surprised if it isn't there for Mameo-7, or Maemo-8, either. Because every time you choose do to something, you're choosing NOT to do something else. Nokia will be bringing lots of new capabilities to their upcoming portable devices, and it would/will costs huge amounts of money. Per many comments, Nokia's margins currently suck- they can't be blowing a lot of money on such a venture. And anyway-- when actual computer screens become touch oriented in a well-defined, not proprietary-only-to-Microsoft way, a lot of it might need to be re-done anyway.

But Maemo is good. Really, really good. The Apple SDK isn't all that great as a software platform, people use it in order to implement on the wonderful iPhone hardware. (Lots of people who "like it" have no experience on Maemo 5 or Maemo 6 preview: They're coming from WinMo 6.x, which makes just about ANYTHING look breathtakingly good to a Developer.) After Nokia gets past their we-don't have-a-decent-touchscreen hardware issue, I think that the features and ease-of-coding provided by the software platform, along with the beauty of the results, will runs circles around Apple's SDK. In the long run, the real competitor is Android, along with those manufacturers who are free to use it. Can Nokia's still-proprietary location-aware code library and supporting database compete with Google? Can Apple compete with both? Will Microsoft "partners" like HTC give up on using WinMo in exchange for all of that MS co-marketing bribery money, or will they kill their Android offering after WinMo 7 gets to be solid?

One thing's for sure: the upcoming competition will be very, very interesting.

.... has a long history of cooperation with MS in attempting to hurt Google, and that's why they have always partnered up with Yahoo! I can't say whether the few remaining Telco monopolies cooperated with India independently of MS/Bing and asked Yahoo to do this, or whether Yahoo caved on its own. But I feel that India probably contacted Yahoo directly, and it was Yahoo's choice (reaching the same conclusion as Bing, under the same circumstances, but without any "collusion").

As for Yahoo being absorbed into Bing, or visa-versa-- Yahoo certainly IS sorry that they held out for too much money in rejecting the previous buy-out offers. IMO, though, it's now unlikely that Steve Ballmer will be an efficient "businessman" about buying them now: Yahoo's rebuff of the previous offers has made them an enemy of the "I WANT TO KILL XYZ!" variety, he's into another chair-throwing temper tantrum and wants to grind them up into a pile of raw sausage filing as revenge. It might be smarter business to buy Yahoo and it's customer base before destroying it, but Ballmer will spend energy and money to choke off their air supply first. He's got vast amounts of cash to pour into Bing and subsidize it's paid advertisers, or subsidize a cheaper "store" system for online small business. Yahoo tries to do whatever MS wants, and they were partners before the takeover battle.... but he can kill them, and I think that he really wants to.

The problem for MS killing Yahoo! by competition isn't the web search, and it isn't the support of online stores. It's the email client base. Even among clueless casual computer users, the nightmares of "HotMail" (together with it's "Microsoft Passport" security fiascoes) have taught them to never, ever become a client of a Microsoft-hosted email service again. If ATT/Yahoo mail gets killed, GMail wins.

Dennis seems to have spoken of the "value" of the software so often that he has succumbed to his own (and Warren's) hype. His talk and actions seem to show something of crazed fantasy about "his" design and implementation.

So from a taxpayer's perspective, and the perspective of anyone who has been abused by the "truthiness" of that software in production, they ALL suck, and Dennis, the "creator", sucks worse. But I feel that Warren and Jim are "worse"- because (IMO) they're not showing signs of overwhelming mental illness. They're just greedy, lying. cheating, criminal bstrds.

At that time, Jim Gibbons was a Congressman (not yet the "worst governor in America"). He and Warren Tripp have a long and IMO unsavory relationship, going WAY back. Before Tripp and Montgomery started fighting about who "owned the code", there were large campaign contributions. And possibly worse: somehow, Warren Tripp and his wife ended up on the same Caribbean Cruise as Jim and Dawn Gibbons (who seemed to have brought a large sum of gambling money with them, wink-wink).) An Email from Tripp's wife to her husband on March 22, a few days before, definitely said, "Please don't forget to bring the money you promised Jim and Dawn". And Warren Tripp responded just a few minutes later, with ""Don't you ever send this kind of message to me! Erase this message from your computer right now!"

The emails are not in dispute. But in Nevada, and even at the Federal level, funny things happen with investigations of powerful people. Jim Gibbons later claimed that this was were probably references to campaign contributions, which he said were lawful and reported in accordance with campaign finance laws. Everyone accepts the later claim that these emails "...were probably references to campaign contributions, which he said were lawful and reported in accordance with campaign finance laws." [quotation from the Wall Street Journal]. Right, Warren Tripp went FRANTIC about lawful and proper campaign contributions, which were to be handed over within International Waters on a cruise ship? Anyway, Warren was obviously a computer expert, knowing that "Erase this message from your computer right now!" would destroy all references and copies of the email. (guffaw.)

sorry about the formatting, I should have used preview! Per above, it definitely is Windows-only.
Just go to the URL, http://www.bitdefender.com/VIRUS-1000451-en--Trojan.PWS.ChromeInject.B.html

"Trojan.PWS.ChromeInject.B" is definitely only effective in Windows, because it installs and executes these files: "%ProgramFiles%\Mozilla Firefox\plugins\npbasic.dll" "%ProgramFiles%\Mozilla Firefox\chrome\chrome\content\browser.js" browser.js calls the The dll file, which can't run in Linux, etc. unless you're running a WINDOZE Firefox via crossover (which would be insanely stupid). Also, since it's installed into the program directory (rather than the user's profile), VISTA will almost certainly make you click for "administrator confirmation" before writing the files. (I don't know for sure, because I don't have VISTA.) - - - - - When I enter the URL for http://www.bitdefender.com/VIRUS-1000451-en--Trojan.PWS.ChromeInject.A.html#, the page content is identical the version for "Trojan.PWS.CHromeInject.B" (even the given name is "Trojan.PWS.ChromeInject.B", they even over-wrote the ChromeInject.A page by accident or, ChromeInject.A isn't spreading in the wild AND has nearly identical characteristcs, perhaps differing only in file sizes.) BitDefender provides the following list of banks their page for this version, http://www.bitdefender.com/VIRUS-1000451-en--Trojan.PWS.ChromeInject.B.html: It filters the URLs within the Mozilla Firefox browser and whenever encounter the following addresses opened in the Firefox browser it captures the login credentials. akbank.com caixasabadell.net credem.it areasegura.banif.es banca.cajaen.es openbank.es poste.it banesto.es carnet.cajarioja.es gruposantander.es intelvia.cajamurcia.es net.kutxa.net bancopastor.es bancamarch.es caixamanlleu.es elmonte.es ibercajadirecto.com bancopopular.es bancogallego.es bancajaproximaempresas.com caixa*.es caja*.es ccm.es bancoherrero.com bankoa.es bbvanetoffice.com bgnetplus.com bv-i.bancodevalencia.es clavenet.net fibancmediolanum.es sabadellatlantico.com arquia.es banking.*.de westpac.com.au adelaidebank.com.au pncs.com.au nationet.com online.hbs.net.au www.qccu.com.au boq.com.au banksa.com anz.com suncorpmetway.com.au quiubi.it cariparma.it bancaintesa.it popso.it fmbcc.bcc.it secservizi.it bancamediolanum.it csebanking.it fineco.it gbw2.it gruppocarige.it in-biz.it isideonline.it iwbank.it bancaeuro.it bancagenerali.it bcp.it unibanking.it uno-e.com unipolbanca.it carifvg.com cariparo.it carisbo.it islamic-bank.com banking.first-direct.com natwestibanking.com itibank.co.uk co-operativebank.co.uk lloydstsb.co.uk mybankoffshore.alil.co.im abbeynational.co.uk mybusinessbank.co.uk barclays.com online.co.uk my.if.com anbusiness.com hsbc.co anbusiness.com co-operativebankonline.co.uk halifax-online.co.uk ibank.cahoot.com smile.co.uk caterallenonline.co.uk tdcanadatrust.com schwab.com wachovia.com bankofamerica kfhonline.com wamu.com wellsfargo.com procreditbank.bg chase.com 53.com citizensbankonline.com e-gold.com paypal.com usbank.com suntrust.com banquepopulaire.fr onlinebanking.nationalcity.com