Toshio

Well, I want to agree with other commenters here, but the way I see the PC market is similar to a bicycle: accelerate or fall to the ground. PCs are an absolute necessity for maybe 20-30% of the consumer population. Whereas until now a household of 7 people would require 5-6 PCs, it's getting to the point of only needing one or two, and then only occasionally. This is, I believe, the fundamental driver behind the weak PC market.

> "There is apparently no way to turn it off, either."

Yes, there is, if you are willing to live a Spartan e-mail lifestyle, like I do.

Simply go to:

https://mail.google.com/mail/h/

I never really liked their new-fangled interface they came up with a few years ago, and they said they wouldn't deprecate the old one, so I kept using it.

Excerpted from Urban Dictionary: "The tool is usually someone who is unwelcome but no one has the balls to tell them to get lost. The tool is alwasys making comments that are out-of-place, out-of-line or just plain stupid. The tool is always trying too hard to fit in, and because of this, never will."

Correct me if I'm wrong. If a web developer is hell-bent on detecting ie, they could look for the presence of the activex API (like jQuery currently does in order to provide a uniform AJAX interface).

> "The point is that Node/Ruby etc aren't particularly efficient [...]"

Any hard data you can point to in support of this rather bizarre statement?

The vast majority of startups in the Valley use MacBooks for development.

That sounds like relying on the kindness of strangers to me.

> "[insert technology here] is free since we're in BizSpark."

For how much longer? And then what?

The good news is there is http://yacy.net/en/index.html

It's a peer to peer search engine without any of the privacy problems that come with using Google or, god forbid, bing.

The bad news is that it requires some effort and dedication from its users. Hopefully recent events will convince more people to give it a try.

I also don't buy the whole premise of US government - bad, EU governments - good.

When push comes to shove, governments everywhere will have no qualms about invading people's privacies en masse.

Human nature is the same everywhere. Power corrupts everywhere.

> "If you are a software engineer and would like to see how Wuala works, feel free to apply for a job at Wuala."

A non-answer if I've ever seen one.

What about someone who applies for a job at Wuala, gets rejected, but still wants to look at the source code?

This should be linked properly.

It strikes me as intellectual laziness to dismiss a story out of hand because someone you don't know (Betteridge) has pontificated about headlines at some point.

Look at microsoft's massive track record for doing this, Google the keywords "evangelism is war" and form your own opinion.

Given microsoft's track record, I wouldn't put it past them. To microsoft, evangelism is war waged aggressively. If microsoft's scroogled campaign makes no sense to you, it's understandable why you would be puzzled by this.

Ya, as usual, the truth is somewhere in the middle.

The PC industry has matured. Compare it, if you will, to those boring utility companies. Yes, they still do make a lot of money, but there's nothing inherently exciting about them.

microsoft today is one of those boring utility companies. Whenever I watch one of their ads full of young, energetic people dancing and clicking, I try to imagine my local water company trying to market itself this way, and I can't stop laughing at that point.

The future is Apple, Google, Mozilla, and a fourth company that hasn't yet been created.

Oh, bummer. I just signed up as a mentor and now I see that Screenhero is only available for Mac and windows.

But I'm a Linux-only guy. Bummer.

Sting operations are always an interesting topic. In many countries, law enforcement people prefer these operations because they're easier to do and elicit better media coverage, at the expense of fighting real crime. And of course, as a result of media coverage people in management get promotions, and the public presumably stops questioning the effectiveness of tax dollars spent.

I don't understand the "eat that" part of the title.

Android and iOS are the de facto standards against which Firefox OS should be measuring its progress.

Other than that, winphone will never be the third ecosystem.

> "Active Directory runs pretty much every Enterprise and Corporation worldwide"

From that, I'd say: so much for "we're a devices and services company now".

> Oh, we're still fighting this "war"?

I'm disenchanted with your double quotes.

This war is real and it will remain so as long as motherboards of generic PCs/laptops come preinfected with microsoft's signing key (which is even more evil than DRM).

Rate-limited by GitHub.

Everything is a graph.

That's interesting, but does the software industry agree or disagree?

Ya, generic PCs would be better without SecureBoot.

I've been in the software industry for 28 years. I was there when microsoft invented their particular flavor of aggressive marketing. Search keywords "Evangelism is war" in case you're not familiar with how it works.

OK, reposting my other comment here because the FUD is getting ridiculous. Here goes:

It is a common misconception that if you have a very low opinion of microsoft you are automatically either a rabid Google fanboi or a rabid Apple fanboi. Myself, I don't hold either Google or Apple in especially high esteem.

You have to understand, however, that the generalized hatred of microsoft is nothing more, nothing less than a direct consequence of microsoft's past coming back to haunt them. No other company in tech comes even close to having so many skeletons in the closet. People have long memories and asking them to ignore microsoft's past is pure intellectual dishonesty.

It is a common misconception that if you have a very low opinion of microsoft you are automatically either a rabid Google fanboi or a rabid Apple fanboi. Myself, I don't hold either Google or Apple in especially high esteem.

You have to understand, however, that the generalized hatred of microsoft is nothing more, nothing less than a direct consequence of microsoft's past coming back to haunt them. No other company in tech comes even close to having so many skeletons in the closet. People have long memories and asking them to ignore microsoft's past is pure intellectual dishonesty.

Oh. My. F*. God.

Just look at the comment section below the article. It's chockfull of microsoft's PR drones and MVPs saying all kinds of nasty things about Google and Apple and not really disclosing their affiliations with microsoft.

What do consumer protection agencies have to say about this?

> "This isn't it. Is there one?"

I don't think there can be one. Even if one existed, its value would be questionable since the rest of us are unable to prove or disprove the claims therein, seen as we don't have access to the nt kernel code. We're stuck with uninformed rants by microsoft's evangelists, unfortunately.