Posts by Henry Wertz 1

I don't get it...

I don't get it. If you just want a pool of stuff, you can have a flat network (all switched), DHCP, and printers and etc. all support autodiscovery (in Windows, OSX, and Linux at least), file shares (windows shared, nfs, iSCSI) allow disks over the network, and it's all is just there. If you're looking for a pool of processors, there's "cloud" distros that will just keep netbooting machines as they are plugged in. But, once you want anything more complicated than this then...? Well, that's when you need some humans in the loop to at least make actual policy decisions.

Also, how does an Exchange server setup take 2 weeks to set up? I mean, any UNIX mail setup I've ever seen, you throw together enough RAM, CPUs, and disks to handle the load, load the mail software on there and start adding accounts.

District Court of Texas?

Oh, Texas is absolutely full of illiterate, imbred rednecks. The courts there being no exception. Patent trolls LOVE taking their cases the district court for the eastern district of texas, as they favor the patent holder an exceptionally high percentage of the time. (I'm not saying Dotcom is a patent troll by any means, but he would want his case done there.)

wifi probes

Indeed, with NetworkManager, or typical OSX or Windows card control, the card scans for networks first, then when it sees the one it wants connects to it. But, if a card is set to an SSID and does not find it in it's scans, it broadcasts probe requests broadcasting the SSID it is looking for. In Android, if you "add a wifi network" then it probes for it, if you see it on your list and connect it does the "scan for networks, connect when it sees it" behavior. It's just as Badvok says, the attacker would then just impersonate that SSID.

You do sound like crochety old men...

Sorry but you do sound like a bunch of crochety old men, except instead of complaining about rock and roll and jazz 60 years ago, you complain about rap (except Maharg.)

Anyway, I don't know how much Facebook may or may not owe, but releasing an ad, then once most people who were going to watch it already have, switching out the music, is not going to help their liability a whole hell of a lot. I guess it makes it easier to comply with an order to stop using it though for sure 8-).

Is 1ms latency really a problem?

Really, I get like 1ms latency out of plain gigabit ethernet. I assume these use faster links, these would have even less latency. I would think the main source of slowdowns would be high utilization of the storage array, at which point having the source of utilization be inside the array instead of outside it will not help these delays at all.

For me, the savings of having some computations done in the storage array would be cost savings. In theory, of course, if you already have these CPUs sitting there doing nothing then using them would just put to use stuff you already have, saving money. Perhaps it's my cynicism, but I think EMC and the ilk will manage to get more money for this, not less, compared to just hooking a regular ol' server up to the storage array.

Interesting...

So I did some googling and there's an ubuntu port with everything working (including xvideo and opengl). It's nice that you can get a USB-stick-sized device, plug it into a montior and use it to run as big a screen as you'd like.

Relay nodes...

VZW doesn't have relay nodes, but they have made extensive use of microwave backhaul for their LTE network. For 3G (EVDO gets 3.1mbps max in one 1.25mhz channel) as far as I know Verizon made minimal or no use of wireless backhaul for this buildout. When I first started using 3G, I'd go to plenty of rural areas and find a top speed of 1.5mbps, i.e. probably a T1 running to it (and later I think 2 T1s.) This was fine for 3G (at least it would guarantee 1mbps or so most of the time) but clearly wouldn't do for LTE. In cities there's all this fiber, metro ethernet, etc., up and they can probably get nice backhaul to most sites. Otherwise they've run backhaul where they can and used microwave for quite a few LTE sites.

They also have a few "extra" links as failsafes; I read last year they had a fiber line get cut in Alabama (or maybe it was Arkansas?), it took down their cell and data service for like a quarter of the state, for about 5 minutes. It took until the next day to fix the fiber, but they just "flipped the switch" and put all the traffic over the microwave link that spanned the break. The article said they had just installed the new microwave backhaul within the past few weeks, and had been planning to turn on automatic failover in a few weeks.

Clueless politicians

"How does providing a large office space with lots of power points and ethernet sockets actually "create 6500 jobs"?"

Oh that's what you get when you have politicians who have no clue pushing for projects. Here in Iowa (midwest US), the politicians in one of our towns just BEGGGGED Google to come in. They said it'd create like at least 1000 jobs, I mean hell, look at that square footage of that data center they want to build, that must mean lots of jobs based on how many jobs a factory that big would create! Google pointed out "No, this is a data center, not a factory, it'll take like 30 people to man it." The politicnas stuck one thumb up their asses and the other in their ears, and gave Google all these tax breaks to put in the data center. NOW, the politicians are like "We don't get it, it's only created 30 jobs!" They started trying to blame Google, who of course pointed out "You idiots, we told you it'd create 30 jobs before hand. Don't pretend it's our fault.", at which point the politicans had to clam up.

This seems to show some cluelessness -- a) Just turning some space into a "digital space" won't magically make it churn out jobs and money. b) Why are they pre-determining it'll use 40 megawatts of power? You've got companies now worrying, if not about the environment, at least about the power and cooling bills. They are saving serious electricity on their racks, among x86 the 8-core systems now use about as much power as a single or maybe dual did a few years back. The ARM servers save even more.

That quote makes the case...

I think the quote from Jobs at the end of the article makes the case right there.

Maybe not CIA, but...

He may not be CIA, but I doubt this was faked. It's a weird gentlemen's agreement, but members of the diplomatic services have diplomatic immunity, diplomatic pouches which are not to be examined by customs (which is not necessarily a pouch but can run up to pallet sized), and so on. It's practically common knowledge that a large percentage of these people do some spying. They aren't from a spy agency necessarily, though, so I'd expect technique to be relatively sloppy.

As for the wig and so on, as Matt Bryant says, they don't get magic face-changing hardware, and this stuff wouldn't actually surprise me. First, the super-high-tech spy-grade face changer box doesn't exist. Second, if it did exist.. if a spy got caught with some gear, which is more likely to be able to be explained away? Some makeup and a wig (could be for a girlfriend, or you just claim to be a little "metrosexual" and want to touch up your face every now and then), or a super-high-tech spy-grade face changer box (good luck explaining it)?

A little too "cloudy"

This is all a little too "cloudy" and vague. Will this app retrieve these applications and run them on the phone? If so, will they be ARM, or are they accomodating Microsoft's inability to do anything serious except for x86 and running these under x86 emulation? Will this instead be a fancy remote desktop solution with the apps running on VMWare's systems? Or will the enterprise be expected to license stuff from VMWare to run on their own servers, and this mobile phone application is to help coordinate all that?

Why?

I still don't know why I would want this. Gross. (Note I know it doesn't HAVE to make burning rubber or fart smell, but most artificial scents are pretty bad, and I wouldn't want them squirting out of my phone.) Plus it looks easy to break off.

Microsoft?

Yeah, the windows updates are pretty big but not compared to streaming movies. One reason Netflix is so high up the list is they will stream content up to about 5mbps, which is probably a higher mbps than I would wish to download similar content at.

Sucks to be you...

Sucks to be you, Bod (reception-wise.) Here in the States, I recently went on a 1000 mile road trip (well 2000 round trip), and had slacker streaming virtually the whole way. I had 4G (LTE) about 50-60% of the way (6-20mbps usually, I did see 80mbps in New Jersey..), 3G (EVDO) for the rest (typically 400kbps-1mbps, but over 2mbps at times... peak on this is 3.1mbps in a 1.25mhz channel). I had maybe 5 miles of no service, and 4 or 5 miles 1x (which is 144kbps peak.. realistically, 80-100kbps.) Oddly the biggest dead zone we encountered was NOT in the mountains, it's dead for a good 3 or 4 miles at the ohio/indiana state line. It's a surprise for me to not see at least 3G on my travels, seeing no service is quite rare.

Would they need a "blue" for phones?

Would they need a "blue" for phones? It seems the main features of blue will be restoring the start button and allowing the choice of UI instead of forcing TIFKAM as is appropriate for a desktop. A phone's not a desktop so I would not think these are important features to wait for.

Redundant and alarmist

This law was redundant and alarmist. Redundant, because SAR ratings are in fact available for every phone, even in the store, and one can pick a lower SAR phone if they wish to. Alarmist, because the people wanting cigarette pack like warnings fail at science.

1) They invariably call it "radiation" to make it sound like it's like you're holding a brick of enriched plutonium up to your head (or even worse, eating it.)

2) They just don't understand the physics. If you lie your hand onto a hot stove, you'll be burned. If you lie your hand onto a 150 degree (fahrenheit) stove (66 celsius) you might be able to keep it on there but get blisters and damage (if it doesn't happen at 150, fine, let's say 160 or 170.) If it's 70 degrees in the room (21 celsius) and you lie your hand on an 80 degree stove (27 celsius), nothing will happen at all. That is simply direct exposure to various intensities of infrared; it's just the same with RF -- touch a ham antenna with 1000 watts running through it and you will get RF burn, and probably at lower power you'll get similar damage and not notice. But cell phones are well below the limit where I'm worried.

Tech demo

It's simply a tech demo, mainly to develop the MIMO technology I would guess. I would also guess you would have 64-MIMO at the base station and something more reasonable like 2x2 MIMO in the device. The main point of MIMO in a system like this, your phone will get a good signal from a few of the MIMO elements, someone else's phone might get a good signal off a few others, so if the equipment takes advantage of this the spectrum can be reused with little or no interference. Before WiMax and LTE came out there were all sorts of pie in the sky tech demos too, but they allowed them to develop practical 4G and brag about the process.

and so in effect the spectrum is reused without interference if this is all handled right.

Micro and macroeconomics

I took intro to microeconomics and macroeconomics classes in 1999. It was interesting, because the classes taught sound market principles, then I looked at the market and by then it had gone wild for at least the last 5 years. But it was strange, because "by the book" a sound market value for a company is like 6:1 to 12:1 price to earnings (stock price is about 6-12x yearly earnings), maybe 20:1 for something like an old school phone company where there's lots of physical assets. Noone in this class seemed to see the current market (20-50:1 P/E being typical on many stocks in 1999) as a problem, but a sign of a booming economy (even though "by the book" this was a classic bubble.)

Blunderbuss

" I'm no expert (far, far from it), but I'd guess it's almost as effective as the early blunderbuss pistols."

Probably not. Guns like blunderbusses would use wadding, in recognition of the poor tolerances of the gun, to help hold in the pressure. This gun does not. Nevertheless, if this were as effective as a blunderbuss that may be all people are looking for -- if someone wants maximum effectiveness they can just go buy a Tech 9 or an AK-47.

So, I do have to laugh at anyone getting worked up over this design. As people have said, it's not a particularly effective weapon. I would think the anti-gun types would encourage this type of gun, people who otherwise might buy a fully harmful Saturday Night Special may instead print themselves a nice harmless Liberator instead. 8-)

Anyway, *shrug* I view it as a proof of concept. In this case, apparently "proof" that more needs to be done to make this effective.

Atari...

The Atari supports adding device handlers, so you could have a USB keyboard as K:, S: screen handler (for stuff that printed to screen instead of writing directly to video RAMM), the physical (floppy) drives would show as D1: and D2: while D3-D8: at least were reserved for other drives. A RAM disk may be at D8: while a SDcard may be D7:. Oh and casette was C:. I think the Commodore had a similar capability of adding on drives at least. Reimplementing the Commodore and Atari video hardware will be difficult, however; among other oddities, the Atari's video hardware would run a "display list", which could change video modes every 2 scanlines. Certain games and applications took full advantage of this.

The issue to me is...

That the authors being ostensibly represented did NOT sign up for a class action suit. This authors guild claims to represent the authors of every book under copyright. Quite a few authors HAVE in fact said "Hey, that's great!" and yet are represented in this class action suit. I would say, cases against Google may not have to be brought individually, but the individual authors who have a concern with this should form a class.

"I was pretty shocked.. maybe I shouldn't of been but basically they said this car has problems - range limits, issues with not leaving it plugged in over night - "it's not a car without issues - if you want a problem free car look elsewhere". Is one approximate quote from the consumer reports guy.

At the same time the same guy says "this car is better than any other car we've EVER (EVER!) reviewed"

that makes absolutely no 3@$#@ sense WTF."

This really isn't contradictory. Every report I've seen is that it handles great, accelerates very well, while still having low operational costs, has nice controls, nice ammenities, and is nice to ride in too. I.e. very good if you exclude the simple fact common to EVs that you can't charge any of them up in a few minutes like you can gas up a car, so you wouldn't want to go on a cross-country trip in one (in the US, where "cross-country" is over 2500 miles.)

AMD?

He may just do that, ditch the system and get one with AMD processors. *shrug*.

"And coincidentally, Detroit can probably be privatized pretty cheaply, and much of the city does look like a set from a certain 80s sci-fi movie franchise."

No it doesn't. When I was there about 5 years ago, Detroit looked far worse. After going to Detroit, the movies looked like pretty nice buildings with some movie dirt thrown on; the actual Detroit had destroyed roads, block after block where the abandoned buildings had collapsed and turned back into fields of grass, broken water mains, still-standing abandoned buildings with no windows. I expected to see gangbangers and so on but they have even left portions of the city. I went to visit a friend, and the nearest onramp to his house was a pile of rubble with "road closed" sign at the end -- it had collapsed, and the rubble was just left to sit. The next onramp had holes through it. When I drove on the highway (which is all overpass, a.k.a. elevated roadway), I could look out the window and see *through* the bridge, the tires were in fact in some cases not running on concrete at all but on the metal rebar that is supposed to be embedded under the concrete. The road I was on was so rough I hit my head on the roof a few times, and this was a 1985 Celebrity, not a car with "tight European suspension.". I would not have even considered driving a semi (a.k.a. a lorry) on these roads, I'd guess it would have been too likely to fall through! I know three other people that have been there -- one hit road debris and destroyed half of their front end, $1500. The second had an Acura with low-profile tires and cracked all 4 rims, bought replacements in Detroit, and had to replace *those* when he got back. The third came much more recently and said the roads had been fixed -- apparently some of the stimulus money congress didn't give to the banks was spent specifically on Detroit's roads (although not on the rest of the city.)

As for this switch -- sounds like a good idea, but I do bet nothing comes of it. Nothing wrong with open source development, but for hardware like this the fabrication technology for one-off builds is probably at least 10 years behind what a proudction run can use, and it's much more difficult to develop and debug something where you never even get to test it (I doubt there'll be much test silicon out and about.) There's software to run on a commodity PC and do switching and routing, but I do doubt this is what Facebook has in mind... making a "cheap and cheerful" 1gb router is just not even an issue, facebook could fix bugs in pfsense or something like this and call it a day. But once you get past that to 10gb and up gear you start needing custom ASICs and so on to maintain line speed.

What I use Linux for...

Betacam's question has been answered... but... web surfing, watching videos, e-mail, bittorrent (occasionally), software development (python, c, c++, Java, Android development). I have VirtualBox set up to run other stuff as needed. (Really, For something like VS I'd rather have it contained in it's own VM than mucking up the rest of my system anyway.) If you have to debug network issues, using Windows is like trying to do it with a butter knife instead of a scalpel, the linux utilities are MUCH MUCH better for this. I upgraded some Cisco kit via tftp upgrade off my netbook, that was fun 8-) Libreoffice in fact works fine for all the word processing and so on I've had to do, people like to make out like it's a complete basket case but really it's not. It's nice to have no worries about viruses and spyware, even if I engage in "risky" online behavoir, and have ALL software update in one place instead of having loads of seperate updaters remind me of updates. Believe it or not, a Linux desktop can actually be a joy to use (as long as you don't use Unity -- eww!) and so long as you aren't reliant on some Windows-only app you would not miss Windows after a while. I'm not about to suggest someone that uses Quickbooks or Photoshop frequently switch to Linux, unless they are comformtable running their main apps in a virtual machine.

Side note, Photoshop is not web-based -- the so called "cloud" versions of Adobes apps, if you read the recent article and comments, are actually essentially the traditional versions of the apps with more restrictive rights restrictions system installed. The DRM disables your applications if it can't phone home, or if it does phone home and finds you haven't made your monthly payment.

"Just got done pinning a channel to my start screen (try not to be jealous android users)."

I'm managing not to be 8-)

Anyway, I second the I'm with Gordon Pyra on this one -- I think most likely, the app writers just were not familiar with youtube APIs (I mean, if you've never written a youtube app before -- I sure haven't -- then you'd have no reason to know them), just assumed some stuff wasn't possible, then found out actually it is.

"Can someone please explain to me what the fundamental difference is between a fiat currency and a virtual currency with no intrinsic value whatsoever?"

http://tapastic.com/episode/3686

(Transscript -- at a bank or stock brokerage office:

"I'm thinking of putting some money into Bitcoin. Do you know anything about it?"

"Well, that would be a very risky venture. Bitcoin is quite volatile! It's a virtual currency controlled by shadowy people in an unregulated environment, without any real guarantee of return. You never know when the

value will drop, or be forced down be nefarious forces, or your money stolen by unscrupulous lowlife scum!"

"So how is that any different than the regular banking system or the stock market?"

"When you use Bitcoin, I can't charge you fees."

)

"And you do CMYK properly?"

Yes, Gimp has supported CMYK for quite a while, and on recent distros (including Ubuntu) they also have color correction support (monitor and printer). I really don't know about feature parity over all, both gimp and photoshop have many addons so I'm sure there's features missing going either way.

Anyway, hate to say it but I guess you have 3 options; 1) Freeze your system in time and use what you have. 2) Pay Adobe more and more money. 3) Suck it up and deal with something else.

Pure research...

I really view these hypersonic missiles as pure research. Someone at the military may be deluded into thinking it's useful but I think it really isn't... the materials research, control systems research, and so on, could trickle down into something useful, and would not need hypersonic speeds to be useful.

Damned if you do, and damned if you don't.

The linked article makes an excellet case against the medallion system. However, it seems to me this is a "damned if you do and damned if you don't" situation. Here's the situation here in Iowa City:

1) First, we had very little regulation. For years we had Yellow Cab, Big 10, and a handful of small cab companies (a few with a few cars and a few others that were actually one person with a cell phone and car.) When the economy really started to crap out a few years ago, EVERYBODY realized cab driving was easy money -- in a town with 50,000 people (30,000 students and 20,000 natives or so), we ended up with *27* cab companies. This made it more difficult to make money of course. But, even with that glut, it still proved impossible to get a useful cab ride after 2AM -- I tried to get a friend of mine a cab, and there were so many drunk students willing to hail a cab to haul them like 4 or 5 blocks that the cabs just loop between downtown and within 4 or 5 blocks of downtown; in over an hour, no cab would give a ~2 mile cab ride, so they finally had to drive home.

2) Solution? The city now requires the operators to have a landline and 24/7 service. (I dont know the landline requirement would hold up in court, since laws requiring a single vendor are illegal and we have a landline monopoly here, unlike most of the US), stricter insurance requirements, and so on. This was intended to eliminate the guys(/chicks) that just had a cell phone and a vehicle operating as a cab. What *really* happened? On paper, over a dozen cab companies went away but in reality, the number of cabs barely reduced at all, most of these cab companies all merged as "Big 10 Aardvark". Quite simply, the businessman who got organized first now collects $700 a month insurance plus $700 a month or so "service fees" to let cabs legally claim they are operating out of his office and dispatch number. But, in reality they will probably not get a single dispatch and actually use their own cell phones to get calls. Essentially, this didn't reduce competition much at all while raising expenses. And of course it's still impossible to get a cab after 2AM.

vnc viewer

There's javascript vnc viewers already for remote desktops. The actual video decode stuff does sound cool though.

Yes it's not the same...

Yes, doing this for a week is not the same for doing it year after year. But, it did open people's eyes to your plight. I think some people just would assume living on quid a day just means not eating out, without realizing just how hard it is to get by.

At least they are profitable...

I figure at least they are profitable. That's a bad sales drop, but the real problem companies are those ones where profits go up and up each quarter, but they keep managing to lose money. Don't get me wrong, this isn't a good sign for HTC, but they aren't actually in trouble yet. As volatile as the market is, I expect someone else will slip up and HTC's time will come again.

This won't help buying a new one...

This won't help buying a new Apple model though, only if you are buying one that was on the market enough for it's stability to be characterized. I won't claim this is UNIQUELY an Apple problem... but.... based on my past experience, one Apple model will run nicely, rock solid, and may even run reasonably cool, really quite nice. The next model (which, since Apple is alergic to model numbers, may look exactly the same...) may prove to have design flaws, implementation flaws, and build problems, may run like a space heater, and may basically be a basket case of crashes and failures.

Props where they are do to Apple for currently having a stable model available -- don't mess it up! 8-)

False economy...?

If the company use is basically websites + normal office stuff, then every platform has a web browser and openoffice or libreoffice. Not a problem. Big problem -- if the company says BYOD, but really means "you will pay for the configuration we want, instead of us buying it for you", then that doesn't work for me at all. My own device will run the OS and software I want, not whatever corporate wants. If they wish to supply a VM I'm fine with that, but my device means MY device.

A few additional problems:

-- What about viruses and security? Some of these devices that run Windows WILL get viruses and spyware eventually (home users do not follow proper security practices, and all to often do not run a proper virus scanner. As it is their own device, they may engage in high risk behaviors, i.e. bittorrent, porn sites, etc., that are highly likely to get a Windows computer infected.) Don't forget, at that point, they do not own that computer, the Russian or Chinese owners of the spyware effectively own it... and they can and will get all corporate information the user of the computer accesses.

-- If the machine breaks, who is responsible? You may think it's vital to get a broken computer up and running immediately, whereas the owner (who, after all, owns the device in a BYOD scenario) may not. Recall, if you expect the IT department to handle this... the IT department now, instead of being expected to support say a fleet of Dell model xyz computers (where they can even keep a spare or two on site), will not be as efficient being expected to work on whatever random model of kit the user has.

-- What about silliness? What if someone mainly types up documents and prints them, but decides that shiny new Ipad is just as good for it as their previous computer... but they can't type worth a damn on that little touchscreen, and can't print. It sounds dumb, but I've seen people glacially plodding at these before (tablets in general) while CONVINCED they are just racing through those screens. Or they get some $75 tablet that just isn't powerful enough, or bring their shit old Win98 system (believe it or not a few still are in the wild...)

Don't get me wrong, this is no guaranteed fail. But, I think in most cases it will be.

Let's try that here in the US.... (Note, $1 is worth about 75 eurocents., I get $7.80!)

Loaf of bread -- 99 cents. (Hard to find compared to ~$1.50 bread but it exists.)

--- looking good! Under budget!

Dozen eggs -- 99 cents on sale (usual price $1.50) (National average is $1.92 though!)

--- Hey this isn't looking too bad!

Milk -- $3.00/gallon or about $1.50 a quart (yes, a quart is half the cost instead of a quarter the cost.) National average is $3.43 right now.

-- Hmm....a little over budget perhaps, but not bad.

Kilo of chickpeas -- these are $1.79 a pound -- $4 a kilo.

-- Oh hell.

Kilo of rice -- average now is 0.71 a pound (but not sold in individual pounds, usually at least 2 pounds.) $1.57 a kilo or so

--OK...

100 pack of Lipton "tea" -- $4.89 (1.45 for 30 bags). I'm not tea afficionado but the general bags of tea you find on the shelf here in the states are vile and undrinkable.

-- Whatevs.

Welp, using the lowest prices that puts me at $10.50, and I have not bought bones, onion, garlic, paprika, and herbs yet. I don't think you can just buy bones here anywhere, and herbs? Heh. The big scam recently around here is they stock these tiny tiny spice containers for like $1 or $2 a piece -- did I mention they are tiny? They hold 5 grams. Fresh garlic cloves and onions (whichever type you'd like) are in fact available too, although it might be hard to use the onion up before it turned.

-- No flavor for you.

Of course you're $1.20 in the hole anyway after bread, eggs, milk, chickpeas, and rice so it may not matter.

-- Indeed. Might have to load up on 30 cent Ramen noodles i guess. Just get them at a Chinese grocery store and not the generic "salt flavored" ramens from the normal grocery store. That's some good eating! 8-)

Just to follow the spirit rather than the letter... well, chickpeas ARE in fact as cheap or cheaper (usually MUCH cheaper) than peanuts, or soybeans... almonds of course are right out...i.e. I'm not overlooking some other staple that just happens to be cheaper in the US.

Microsoft destroyed the netbook

"I think that the problem with Netbooks is that the vociferous naysayers were exposed to the early tiny screen Linux models and found them wanting and have slagged off Netbooks ever since. If they'd tried the much better later models they'd have a different opinion. But then again, the anti-MS brigade never got over the fact that most people wanted to ditch Linux and have something that could run Windows."

What *I* didn't get over was that Microsoft destroyed the netbook. A netbook that has a faster CPU, more RAM, more hard disk sapce, and a large screen, plus cash sent straight to Microsoft, so it's like double the cost? That is not a netbook any longer, that is a low end notebook computer, which had already been on the market for years and were uninteresting despite them referring to these still as netbooks. Then, these still proved barely adequate to run WIndows 7 due to it's bloat (while they ran Linux fine.) So they put even MORE CPU power, more RAM, more hard disk space, and yet more cost. Yeah.

I'm waiting to see the actual specs on these supposed $200 Android thingies -- if I can get Android the hell off and normal Linux the hell on, these should work a treat (although I'd prefer an ARM model to an Atom one I think.)

How about a good OS?

These guys really should be sticking Ubuntu on (with the "traditional" interface pre-installed, instead of a downloadable option, since Unity is awful). It wouldn't even matter if it was ARM or not then.

Those who say the Linux desktop rquires excessive command prompt use, firstly it's simply not true -- the GUI covers most uses. Secondly, take a real look at Windows -- a command prompt, powershell, config in various text files as well as a registry (regedit is technically a GUI, but come on....) Here's the thing....

There's really 3 ways to go about this:

1) Have everything doable via GUI. This would end up with a lot of menus, submenus, and tabs, with huge amounts of buttons, checkboxes, knobs, and so on. If you consider regedit to be a GUI it may fit in this category. But really I have seen no system that uses this, and I don't think it'd work well.

2) Have everything doable via GUI, Apple style. Apple style means "if it's not in the GUI, you can't do it." I'm aware of the unix base of OSX, but I'm also aware that much of OSX's GUI doesn't really have any extra configurability sitting underneath it.

3) Everybody else. Windows and Linux *both* have extensive options not available via GUI (and face it, regedit is technically a GUI but not really friendly by any stretch.) They both cover typical options without the necessity of a GUI. They both have people that falsely claim that people have to constantly fiddle around outside the GUI to get basic every day tasks done.

Seems dubious...

I don't like the US carriers, and I like Android updates. But, unfair and deceptive? Really? *shrug*

Also, they may be disappointed in the result -- in general, one would not be getting an update from 2.3.x to ICS or JB, it'd be 2.3.5 to 2.3.6 or so. Think about it, newer android versions use (slightly) more ram and so on, and if the carriers pushed an update like that, THEN they'd get flack about making people's current phones useless due to "bloat" of the updates. In reality, the US carriers *are* terrible about this, some phones have real bug fixes from the carrier but nothing from the cell co. But, it's just not going to be some huge game changer.