michaeladebose

I remember the days when Russians and Chinese were defecting to the US because of these same kind of things, are we now in the early stages of traffic going the other way?! I can't say if Snowden is a hero or not, though I'm strongly leaning that way. What concerns me more is that our government lately seems most capable of justifying anything in the interest of national security and that's very dangerous. It's a bit strange that a government so into justice and truth can't seem to find a whistle blower we like yet. This country is capable of much good but we have to choose to be that. It's not enough to browbeat other countries for not being as up to it as you are. At some point, you've got to actually be different and make the hard choices. We however seem to be making the same exact choices. Once you throw in the government telling SoftBank/Sprint what to buy and assigning security personnel which does sound a lot like a gov. minder, its clear we've lost our way. Having grown up in the 70s and 80s I recall how much China and Russia were ridiculed as being less than us because of how their press supposedly were used and how they apparently monitored all their citizens actions. Explain to me how we're different. I don't want to get into a long debate about ducks and walking, but seriously how are we different because it would seem the Chinese and Russians would be jealous of the tools we've got over here. Where we are now seems to be spying on Chechnyans=bad, spying on everybody=good or better yet, their justification for spying=bad, our justification for spying=good. Much better. Indeed!

It will be interesting. Apple has neglected pro content creators in the upgrade/revision product cycle so they are probably forced to come up with something worth while. If I recall the revved Mac Pro of last year didn't get Thunderbolt but if any Apple product needed it, it would be the Mac Pro, since most 3rd. party Thunderbolt products would exist in that market. The Mac Pro is a great workhorse for audio and video which are about the only activities that justify a Mac Pro without blinking while absorbing the cost. Logic and Final Cut are due for some love too.

The introduction of touch screen monitors while not making sense for consumers, makes perfect sense in mixing and editing environments, where mixing/control surfaces are outputting to attached to computer but aren't always right there.iPads and iPhones are often being used for just this, so it is conceivable that a touch screen would fit right in. We only need wait.

Don't forget Tim Cook's note to Franz last year, promising something great for pro customers. Since he referenced and upgrade to the "current" model that day, we may get to hear something about a redesigned Mac Pro. I can only hope.

One issue is awareness. Opensource software still seems like the great unknown to the average American. Even though many US corporations utilize and benefit from opensource software, the credit goes to the brand, a la IBM, Android, Apple (BSD and a technicality), but not opensource. The other issue is cultural and solely the fault of the opensource community. Probably a very over the top simplification, but we know that when the concept of Windows was first introduced to IBM, they felt that if you needed training wheels, you didn't need a computer. Interestingly this tends to be the prevailing attitude in opensource. Despite the fact that systems like Windows and OS X rule the consumer space, many in opensource would rather blame the user, for not wanting to deal with repos. A lot of us in opensource do not see freedom to choose not to hack as a choice or a right when in fact it is. The barrier to entry in the Linux world is the boot loader and look how many there are. If the open source world is really serious about greater adoption, there needs to be agreement on a single trouble-free-config-neutral install for the curious in every distro, then every distro agrees to mate that install to the exact same trouble free boot loader and all distros would call this install setup the same exact thing. This way, the curious, don't have to learn the peculiarities of a bootloader just to try a distro. Second by all distros referring to this trouble free setup as the same exact thing, the curious have a consistent idea of what they are getting regardless which distro they are actually trying. When new users don't have to figure out things that they don't have to worry about when installing Windows, then and only then will we begin to see greater adoption. Hence, Secure Boot, but we can solve that one too.

Google's not going to be the right fit everywhere which is cool, but nice of them to start the conversation. There are other business models out there to explore, which means a lot of opportunity for businesses small or otherwise with capital. Still the job of municipalities is to protect the interest of their citizens and if the citizens decide this is what they want and they want their municipality to provide this need, cool too.

Corporations provide a lot of leadership and progress but the hypocrisy on some issues is stunning. When it comes to the lower taxes corps pay in other countries, US corps and their proxies are suddenly willing to entertain "not made in the USA", but when you talk healthcare, network performance, vacations or some of the other "innovations" that these same countries they look to as examples of better corporate tax structures also provide, they don't want to hear it. That is their right, but other corps and municipalities should be free to provide services they choose not to and that's where a lot of the problems are coming in. Lawmakers should not be able to legislate access to clearly legal technologies from the voters they supposedly serve.

It was the X-15 and many similar vehicles before and after it that enabled me to see myself in technology. Still gotta get that pilot's license but nothing but excellent dreams and endless good memories. Never occurred to me until now how I pour over processor design specs and tech white papers, but honestly it all started many years earlier with me pouring over everything I could find out about Saturn rocket motors, and other stratospheric endeavors of the country. Even wrote the Air Force and NASA for a grade school project or two. Good times all around.

Personally I love how the world is solving Hollywood's unwillingness to feature people of color in any manner serious and that's those people providing their own stories in their own faces directly to the audience vs. Hollywood forcing some character race changes. Hollywood has become flat in a lot of ways while audiences are increasingly global in scope and taste. It seems a remake would get green lighted quicker than an original concept. The primary issue posited here is that Kickstarter's net of contributors just needs to be much larger. I wouldn't mind helping to fund a Korean, Nigerian, Chinese or Indian film originating in those countries. I view same all the time, just as easily as anything originating here in the States.

Tablets and smartphones are true "Personal Computers". Consumers are just redefining "PC" more accurately as tablets have ushered in 'just enough computing' for those who just check email, buy stuff, socialize and type the occasional document. Even when computers were slow, consumers were being sold more computer than they needed. In many cases it was slow internet connections that really made waiting on a computer unbearable..

Investing In People in a Kickstarter way is a very timely concept. For various reasons, most cultural, the mindset required is counter to today's political climate at least for some. We can see this in the laying off of a couple thousand people and the resulting hundred plus million dollar bonus. For further evidence there are those who get fighting mad about individual people receiving a few hundred dollars assistance a month, but see nothing wrong with individual billion dollar corporations receiving tax benefits, havens and R&D assistance, despite the company already being quite successful. Simply it seems there is a a bias or near hostility to investing in people in any meaningful way.

I have given to several Kickstarter campaigns regardless them being business campaigns or something to send elementary students on some grand adventure. The power of Kickstarter is in those needing funding being able to get others and mine attention when previously there was no way to do it so broadly. From the outside looking in, I almost bet given a choice, a startup might prefer to get much smaller sums from many more people as it spreads the pressure for them to succeed over a much greater swath of people, potentially yielding much less invasive (prone to tampering) "investors". Kind of like the less people have to give, even if they don't forget, you're less likely to feel like they think maybe they own you and that's a good thing. There have been some great ideas that went to pot either because they got the wrong kind of funding too soon or sometimes just the wrong kind of investor. This happens to students even more often and needless to say real and actual humans all the time. Great post.

China is already in the process of developing its own CPU infrastructure based on either a MIPS or other RISC design, so it would make sense that they want OS independence as well. This is actually pretty good policy in my opinion for any sovereign country. After all several countries in the EU are have or are moving away from Microsoft and other US technologies for various real or imagined reasons, but its still good policy.

All statements regarding China in Africa, must be contextualized by Europe's 400 years plus on the continent. Especially when Europe is doing the complaining. It is up to the African leadership to safeguard the health, wealth and well being of their countries, but as near as I can see, the Chinese don't even come close when compared to Europe's slightest offenses.

There are problems in the relationships clearly. What encourages me is that I have seen both African and Chinese leadership openly discuss them. Meanwhile, Europe and the US won't even send high level officials to the UN Conference dealing with the slave trade and racism, let alone verbalize an apology, so who would really take them seriously when citing China's wrongs. It would be nice if they seemed sincere in their concern for Africa, as some of their complaints regarding China are indeed true but coming out of their mouths appear as yet more hypocrisy.

Who doesn't want radar in their car, but most times on the 405 I could probably just get out the car and count the other ones myself.

Welcoming and to whom is misleading. Vacationers should consider their government's policies before planning vacations so as to be somewhat prepared for how they might be received. Surely you couldn't expect to characterize nations in negative terms and then like go on vacation in the same country where your government's policies are perceived to be unhelpful at best. Here in the US the Russians are like always the bad guys in our movies which do find their way to Russia. Hopefully you get where I'm going with this.

On top of that, some travelers often as the countries they hail from don't get that the world has all kinds and that's cool. Instead they get bent out of shape if there isn't a McDonalds or/and they can't find other food from their home country. I've heard the British and the French complain about US tourist and these are ally countries so it really is difficult to see how this list is supposed to be objective let alone helpful.

I'm less concerned about the views of some in the KDE community. I'm more interested in whether or not there is already KDE on the devices in question and if not is there a timeline. Regardless Canonical's goals, the objective isn't bad and may yield positive results. I do prefer KDE but if there aren't any shipping phones, phablets or tablets I'm more inclined towards a Ubuntu device than say Android and there are others I'm sure. Active is nice but it will need partners.

Some of the virtual mobile operators might be interest like Ting or even Sprint and Virgin. If the Linux community could come together and agree on reference designs for the above device types and even desktops and laptops, it might be easier to get at least a hardware vendor on board because if any Linux distro could run on a given piece of hardware, the potential sales are much larger and a vendor might listen to the community on the off chance the sales opportunities are worth it. Thus the community wouldn't be held hostage by secure boot or only able to get a device after it was spec.d out by the original vendor.

The issue for Canonical probably does come down to the difficulty involved in getting consensus in the opensource community and the fact there is money on the line. Ubuntu being a single user experience on different devices could be a boon to the OS. Yet the community's objectives don't line up with Canonical's nor are they required to. However, Canonical is spending very real money so instead of being held hostage in potentially fruitless consensus building it would make more sense to invest the money where you have the most control and where you know you're going to get the right outcome.

There are conflicting views on commercial software and corporate interest in the opensource community. It's more than a little poetic because opensource endeavors require money at every juncture. The result is some really great software from time to time gets abandoned either because the developer finds he can opensource his code but finds his landlord or car lease require something that pays steadily or/and the community could never agree on the import of the software in the first place. I've said previously the opensource community at some point does need to have discussions that really address ideology at least so there is a better understanding of various priorities of all interested parties. The current discussion a perfect example as of all the articles I've read on the topic, this is the only one that contextualizes Canonical's financial imperative to get this done much sooner than later.

Technical merits of Mir or Wayland aside, the real question is, in the time frames Ubuntu(Canonical) has identified, could the changes required for Wayland to be a viable solution across all platforms identified by Canonical, be implemented? The followup to that is then, could it be implemented in the way that we go about new directions in the opensource community?

I'm not even sure Mir is up to the challenge, but I do know that the kind of decision making that is paramount in commercial ventures isn't likely to happen as quickly as its needed to, in the opensource community. Whether Wayland was being developed in as wide a scope as Canonical is looking at I don't know. What appears clear to me is that no one was looking nearly as far down the road as Canonical except KDE Active, whose time frames appear to be 'it will happen when it happens'. Opensource is a constellation of different takes on various ideas and we've even done that with the licenses. Ironically we seem to think there's only one way to discuss change and there's only one time frame, dare I say glacial; which allows a few rounds on the mailing list and a couple circuits + talks at various *ni(u)x events before we can feel good about it. That is a strength of opensource, but not when going commercial.

Apple and MS have been moving towards a 'unified experience' and Ubuntu + Android is a decent implementation towards that end but now Canonical decides to go all in. We'll have to work on their communication, but seeing how the iPhone got Consumers and Enterprise customers to rethink Apple kit, Canonical's moves may if for once benefit opensource as a whole. This needed to be done and it needed to be done NOW, which is not quite our way of doing things and I think that might be the main issue.

It's not about working from home or the office, its about what's needed to do the job and that means a balanced approach, not ideology. Yahoo has struggled with vision and not having one doesn't help even with employees stacked up outside of the boss' office waiting for them to come down off the mountain top. There are many businesses looking to find their footing in an increasingly global workplace and old models only help when something was fixed that wasn't broken. This of course leads me to ask, when was the point Yahoo's downward glide began identified and what was the work policy regarding remote work? If this is an all hands on deck, we'll review the policy once we've stopped treading water, then that makes more sense.

Do we really know enough about our own system? We go to the moon but only pay cursory attention to the oceans so I'm not sure we should continue to repeat this. As you stated being first is what led to the paucity of what we know about the moon and yet what you're proposing sounds just like another bragging rights adventure.

It's been clear that Samsung was the one to beat and only a matter of time before they moved beyond Apple. Apple can at least feel good in knowing they were right to be concerned about Samsung all along.

Samsung and Apple are late to the watch segment. Most of the watches I've seen seem to be secondary notification type devices. Any opportunity to save the battery of the phone or tablet makes sense but if Samsung or Apple doesn't push the envelope beyond secondary notifications, an announcement in this space would be nothing more than a branding opportunity.