Honestly I'm amazed by how unanimously friendly Hacker News (and Reddit) are to Wave.
It was the anti-suckless - overengineered, XML and web-based, anti-privacy, pampering users instead of educating them (e.g. in a corporate environment, using a VCS together with IRC is a much better way to exchange information). I would've expected at least one contrary voice somewhere :)
The reason why we should use HTTP authentication is similar to why we can have custom stylesheets, or why everyone should just use nntp instead of web forums, or a MUA instead of web mail.
"Content" shouldn't provide its own "style" - the user should be free to choose whatever matter of presentation they desire.
Furthermore, using HTTP authentication everywhere (at least as an omnipresent alternative) would make sites much more programmable, and thus accessible.
> You're not speaking about desktop applications / games
Those apps aren't hard to develop because libraries or the environment or whatever; they're hard to develop because their developers want them to be closed, so recompilation and putting them into the real package management system is impossible. Starting with such a handicap makes things complicated :)
> If you think there are better paradigms that should be explored, then jump in and show the world how right you are
The better paradigms have been known and used for 20 years (such as the Unix paradigm of connecting multiple programs, the CLI, and so on). That it doesn't appeal to some end users is not our problem.
The major advantage of "Desktop Linux" (that I've been using happily for quite a few years now) is that it's utterly unlike Mac OS X or Windows. We use Linux not because it's free, but because it's more comfortable, the UI is better and friendlier, and developing programs for it is a whole hell of a lot easier.
Everything Gnome, Ubuntu and this sort of people do work against these advantages. We use Linux because of its differences - these differences to other systems need to be accentuated (zsh, the suckless project, etc), not fought against (Ubuntu, network-manager, HAL, etc).
By every step these people take, Linux gets more difficult to develop for and less comfortable to use. This needs to stop.
"In order to answer the questions: Is the font big enough? Does it render well? Is the Schriftbild (text impression) inviting or rejecting? How does it feel to read? ...we had no other choice than printing out your screens on a 1:1 scale. We had to print out hundreds of pixel designs to get a feeling for the new canvas and the high resolution... After two months of printing, we did get the type choices and sizes quite right..."
I recently bought a Nexus One, and it's the BEST friggin phone I've ever owned. I am one very happy camper now
Responsiveness, Maps, speed of Maps, the browser (holy shit the browser), the screen... are all awesome.
Wrt. marketing: other than Internet mutterings, I first heard about it from a friend who is a Google employee - so I guess you can say it wasn't particularly well advertised.. NB, I'm a Linux-oriented software developer, so I might be counted in the presumable target audience.