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Yeah, just remove the Elop and you've got a killer N9/N950 product-line to introduce into a hungry public. Even though he relegated the sales of the N9 to the nether-regions of the world (*not* the EU or US mind you!), sales of the N9 best sales of Wp7 phones.

Heck, the N950 is an awesome N9 with a keyboard and Nokia hasn't even sold any(!) The N950 were *given* to developers to code N9 applications. Nokia could ditch Elop and start selling linux smartphones again with products ready to go. No, Elop sells the Linux-phone factories and now he's actually building new ones in Viet Nam. What a (wealthy) train-wreck that former-Microsoft guy is, what with his Microsoft/Nokia shares/cash.

Want numbers?
http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2012/04/who-wants-numbers-lumia-on-t-mobile-lumia-800-vs-lumia-710-how-many-nokia-n9.html

My N9 came from Switzerland and it is awesome. My neighbor bought one too and I explained how to setup www.12voip.com as a SIP account so he'd save money on calls. He said how come everyone doesn't know about this awesome phone that looks just like a Microsoft Lumia phone?

The N9 has 64Gb possible (not 16Gb max as Lumia (00)
front-facing camera (not Lumia)
Swipe keyboard (awesome)
SSH/VNC/PGP is a breeze

To me, this N9 is like knowing to buy and hold on to something like a 1963 Corvette, but then I use linux for work so what do I know?

The best available numbers are on the site linked to Who Wants Numbers? Lumia on T-Mobile? Lumia 800 vs Lumia 710? How Many Nokia N9?

Nokia could just publish the activation numbers as Google and Apple do, but instead they seem to only publish the number of phones sent off to operators and even that they do rarely. I wonder why?

Here you go.

Sorry, that's a typical Tomi Ahonen rant that only references some comment thread which does not cite anything of substance. My request stands.

Here you go: N9 sales triple that of Lumia line.

Here you go. Nokia did their best to hide the embarressing numbers.

http://geospatial.blogs.com/.a/6a00d83476d35153ef015436547365970c-popup

Not effectively, as they cannot arrest someone claiming self-defense without provable probable cause that it wasn't self-defense. Since there's often no other living witness than the shooter, and you can't compel the shooter to provide evidence without an arrest, there's damned little investigation possible. See, e.g., http://prawfsblawg.blogs.com/prawfsblawg/2012/03/trayvon-martin-and-floridas-stand-your-ground-law.html

So, I have an Android now and used Nokia phones in the past. What I read there: no bluetooth file transfer, bad build quality, no sms draft save, no FM radio, no own mp3 as ring tones, ...

Seriously, I did not look into Lumia myself, but reading that list, I would expect sales to be bad.

As an anecdote, a family member has an iphone 4, and I was visiting and explained how they could go on their home wifi to see websites on their iphone! Rejoice, Revelation! People with cash buy these things and expect phone to work, SMS to work, music playing/radio to work, photography to work, and quick picture exchange. They did not even check mail via the phone! So, all the rest in a smartphone is extra if you have time, but many people with jobs and children really do nothing else with their phone. If windows fails there as this guy says, then Nokia will fail

There's another blog post by the same author (as in the summary) talking about the new Nokia 808 Pureview, which, with 41MP, Xenon flash, microSD, no Windows, etc. is a great phone, but Nokia is stupidly not going to sell it in the US.

He's been vehemently against Nokia's decision to leverage their smartphone strategy on Windows Phone. For more awesome reading explaining why, check this out.

As explained in the link above, it's not Nokia's decision to use Windows Phone on their smartphones that is the chief problem. They are, essentially, hedging their entire existence on the platform, which is a very bad bet for a company whose popularity has always been stronger in Europe, Asia and developing nations. It's almost like a Kodak in reverse in that they are, more or less, giving less importance to their bread and butter and more importance to a huge, HUGE risk. (Notice that HTC and Samsung, the top dogs in the non-iPhone smartphone world, use more of their resources for building Android and their own OS's than Windows Phone.)

The sole fact that, to this day and despite a very recent system update, Windows Phones still have the crippling text-message-of-death bug clearly demonstrates where Microsoft thinks they're at with the OS. I haven't seen any of the major players on Android/iOS commit serious time to Windows Phone yet; until this happens, it's a sinking ship.

No, the private market has already put forth a more cost-effective bid. ($39.95)

I consider myself a Libertarian, and yes I make a living because of copyright.

Correction: you take advantage of copyright to make a living. If there was no copyright, I believe that you would still make a living; possibly in a different field, possibly utilizing your other talents, possibly more successfully, possibly even benefiting society more than you do now.

I also think that piracy is rampant.

And I think that fornication is rampant.
And it was also rampant in the state of Virginia before 2005 (It was a criminal offence until Martin v. Ziherl).
Doesn't make it wrong though.

A LOT of people don't realize it is wrong.

Correction: A LOT of people don't AGREE that it is wrong.
And maybe, just maybe, the same "A LOT of people" are right about this.

But the general feeling I get from the average slashdotter is "copyright is evil because I want free stuff."

Funny. The arguments that I hear are that copyright -- in its current reincarnation -- creates artificial scarcity, locks down culture, limits the freedom of expression, robs the public domain, etc. Some of them laid down more logically are presented more eloquently than others but then, not everyone is a natural public speaker.

I hear time and again how the publishers are screwing the creators

Dont' they?

or the general public

Dont' they?

I think that things like SOPA are bad. But not that copyright should be abolished.

And I think that it should be. But then, I also believe that corrupt politicians and dirty cops should be thrown in jail to rot and corporate officers should be legally responsible for the actions of their respective corporations so it tells you how much my ideas are worth.

I also think there are a lot of people here who thing they way you think in that it is a matter of principle. BUT the noisiest argument tends to "I want my shit for free"

Then perhaps you should pay more attention to the quietly stated reasonable arguments and learn to tune out the noise.

Of course these people then call the "mafiaa" greedy

Aren't they?

Second one: I mean like this prediction When Things Get Even Worse Than You Thought - 1st Preview of Potential for Nokia Microsoft Partnership, short term 2011 and 2012. He got the numbers down with remarkable accuracy.

So if we take just one prediction of Mr. Ahonen that happened to hit the ballpark, and ignore some others where he was full of shit, we can say he is remarkably accurate? OK...

Thirdly, forbes:
# Number 1 spot belongs to ex-Nokia executive Tomi Ahonen whose blog Communities Dominate Brands is a fixture on the mobile scene largely because of Ahonen’s comprehensive knowledge of the mobile ecosystem. Tomi is based out of Hong Kong.

And the method of this particular Forbes contributor is to measure the Twitter flutter that each posting generates. Sorry, I was unaware that the most successful internet trolls count for "power influencers" these days. I guess that weather announcer guy named Watts is a power influencer in climate science, by the same measure.

And lastly, same analyst posts 13 reasons based on fact that Lumia is a failure. You should read it, instead of just ranting that everyone is being unfair to microsoft.

I actually read it earlier, and most of the reasons he puts forward are not true or carry disputable opinions. No messaging, really? Bad cameras? I'm afraid he didn't see the 900 coming. Look and feel not competitive? I guess by "typical Nokia elements" he means the retarded Symbian menus. Fails in variety of models? Yeah, Nokia should have put 20 barely distinguishable models on the market a year down from the big platform switch. Can't you see that this guy started with the conclusion and then tried to work out reasons for it?

Second one: I mean like this prediction When Things Get Even Worse Than You Thought - 1st Preview of Potential for Nokia Microsoft Partnership, short term 2011 and 2012. He got the numbers down with remarkable accuracy.

So if we take just one prediction of Mr. Ahonen that happened to hit the ballpark, and ignore some others where he was full of shit, we can say he is remarkably accurate? OK...

Thirdly, forbes:
# Number 1 spot belongs to ex-Nokia executive Tomi Ahonen whose blog Communities Dominate Brands is a fixture on the mobile scene largely because of Ahonen’s comprehensive knowledge of the mobile ecosystem. Tomi is based out of Hong Kong.

And the method of this particular Forbes contributor is to measure the Twitter flutter that each posting generates. Sorry, I was unaware that the most successful internet trolls count for "power influencers" these days. I guess that weather announcer guy named Watts is a power influencer in climate science, by the same measure.

And lastly, same analyst posts 13 reasons based on fact that Lumia is a failure. You should read it, instead of just ranting that everyone is being unfair to microsoft.

I actually read it earlier, and most of the reasons he puts forward are not true or carry disputable opinions. No messaging, really? Bad cameras? I'm afraid he didn't see the 900 coming. Look and feel not competitive? I guess by "typical Nokia elements" he means the retarded Symbian menus. Fails in variety of models? Yeah, Nokia should have put 20 barely distinguishable models on the market a year down from the big platform switch. Can't you see that this guy started with the conclusion and then tried to work out reasons for it?

First response is an ad hominem, I won't bother responding.

Second one: I mean like this prediction When Things Get Even Worse Than You Thought - 1st Preview of Potential for Nokia Microsoft Partnership, short term 2011 and 2012. He got the numbers down with remarkable accuracy.

Thirdly, forbes:
# Number 1 spot belongs to ex-Nokia executive Tomi Ahonen whose blog Communities Dominate Brands is a fixture on the mobile scene largely because of Ahonen’s comprehensive knowledge of the mobile ecosystem. Tomi is based out of Hong Kong.

And lastly, same analyst posts 13 reasons based on fact that Lumia is a failure. You should read it, instead of just ranting that everyone is being unfair to microsoft.

First response is an ad hominem, I won't bother responding.

Second one: I mean like this prediction When Things Get Even Worse Than You Thought - 1st Preview of Potential for Nokia Microsoft Partnership, short term 2011 and 2012. He got the numbers down with remarkable accuracy.

Thirdly, forbes:
# Number 1 spot belongs to ex-Nokia executive Tomi Ahonen whose blog Communities Dominate Brands is a fixture on the mobile scene largely because of Ahonen’s comprehensive knowledge of the mobile ecosystem. Tomi is based out of Hong Kong.

And lastly, same analyst posts 13 reasons based on fact that Lumia is a failure. You should read it, instead of just ranting that everyone is being unfair to microsoft.

Never mind that he is a former Nokia strategist,

I wonder what made him an ex-Nokian, especially considering the rampage against Nokia leadership he seems to have been on lately.

his predictions to date are astonishingly accurate

You mean like his prediction of an iPhone app market crash?

and even forbes thinks he is one of the most influential speakers on mobile today?

Citation?

Get over it, he is right, Lumia fails..

I reckon it's too early to say with certainty, without a hearty dose of wishful thinking.

(...)

The real Top 13 reasons why Nokia Lumia and Windows Phone will fail, not just in USA but across planet

It's worth reading.

It is worth reading indeed! As a European which owned several Nokia phones, I found this article very interesting. It is written by the former Nokia executive Tomi Ahonen, most of the given reasons are based in the fact that WP7 is a major departure from Nokia's philosophy and vision (which was reflected in their products). Here are some insightful quotes:

REASON 1 MESSAGING MADNESS: Nokia has a natural strength in messaging-oriented smartphones (the most used feature of all mobile phone owners from Africa to the USA is messaging, including smartphone owners). It is abandoned with the first 3 Lumia phones. (...) The world's first person-to-person SMS text message was sent in Finland in 1993 on the Radiolinja GSM network from one Nokia phone to another, by a Nokia employee Riku Pihkonen. (...) Even the inventor of SMS, Matti Makkonen finished his career at Nokia (he was my last mentor). (...) And what has been a major feature of Nokia smartphones always - a high proportion of them have had physical QWERTY keyboards in several formats (...) Did Nokia bother to put a QWERTY keyboard onto its first three Lumia phones? No! Note, this is a Nokia competitive advantage. Note, 90% of American smartphone owners wish this more than anything else (...) Nokia voluntarily abandons nearly half of the addressable market and instead - forces, FORCES all Lumias to be compared to iPhones (rather than compared to Blackberries).

REASON 2 - CAMERA CATASTROPHY
Nokia mobile phones have always been known for good cameras, its flagship phones tend to have had the best cameras in the world. The camera is the second most used feature. The Lumia series is a downgrade of Nokia camera capability and will severely disappoint past Nokia owners and not stand up to rivals today.

REASON 6 - INPUT FAILURE. The Nokia strength has been exceptional QWERTY keyboards. On the N9 using MeeGo Nokia was able to innovate with touch screen inputs. But Lumia has neither. It is a cheap copycat of the iPhone style touch screen input and Lumia abandons natural Nokia strengths while showing no competitive advantages.

REASON 7 - Fails in variety of models. Nokia has traditionally been able to hold to the world's largest smartphone market share - a year ago Nokia was literally not just bigger than the iPhone, it was bigger than the iPhone and all Samsung smartphones - combined. Now Samsung is 'doing the Nokia' with its expanding Galaxy portfolio while the three Lumia devices are near clones of each other. Nokia is again voluntarily abandoning a competitive advantage, which means Lumia will perform less well than Nokia was able to do in the past.

REASON 10 - REGRESSING on features and services. (...) The joke was, that to see what will be on the next iPhone model, just look at a 3 year old Nokia flagship. The Lumia is the first time ever, that Nokia has regressed in its features, severely. Not just pruning unnecessary tech 'bloat' but literally going back in tech, to specs that were normal on Nokia phones a year, two, even three years ago.

REASON 12 - POISONED CARRIER RELATIONSHIPS with Nokia. The handset industry is different from the PC industry or home electronics, in that the carriers/operators decide which phone succeeds and which fails (witness the short-lived Microsoft Kin). Nokia used to have the platinum-standard carrier relationships a year ago. Those were burned by the CEO last year. Today Nokia's carrier relationships are the worst they have ever been.

Read TFA for missing reasons and references.

According to this article posted elsewhere on this thread, messaging and camera are by far the most important aspects.

As for quality and quantity, fart apps on Android and iPhone are like text editors once were on SourceForge. There is a lot of padding in those app totals. All of the apps that I've ever cared to use are on Windows Phone, but like I said I'm probably in the lame demographic when it comes to app demand. Things like a synchronized calendar with Exchange, Google Apps, and Facebook are what float my boat and that is built in.

It's alot of stuff, brand being one of them. Tomi Ahonen has a really detailed analysis of lumia's failure, much of which is abandoning Nokia's way of doing things and alot of it is about wp being utter crap and Elop handling things catastrophically.

The real Top 13 reasons why Nokia Lumia and Windows Phone will fail, not just in USA but across planet

It's worth reading.

Nokia used to be an option till February last year.

I understand your frustration. We get bombarded with calls and emails. Ten years ago, we had a customer base of tens of thousands of people. Today its tens of millions. I do not envy product support.

Like I said, there came a point where software engineering seemed to lose its way. I'm sorry you got caught in that. The 7xx/7x5 series was a huge jump in complexity from what had been developed before. While they are uber-packed with features, I'm not surprised that came at a price.

There have been a lot of changes in how things are done since the 7xx/7x5. The stability of the 12/13xx is very good. My girlfriend has a 1390, and has never had it crash, but sometimes the speedo gets stuck. I haven't seen a 22xx crash in over a year, and my 23xx has been very stable on recent software. For something the same generation as your 765 though, the 8xx/8x5 series was rock solid. Also, the 295W/G60 are absolutely unstoppable. In 4 years, I've never seen a G60 official release crash. The 8xx/8x5/295W/G60 were all Linux based though, so maybe that had something to do with it. ;)

I can't tell you about anything in the bug tracker, sorry. But, everything you mentioned has been passed in from product support. The 765 hasn't been EOL'd yet, expect more releases and bugfixes. I know that there are some crash/reboot bugs that will be fixed. My knowledge of the fitness devices is extremely limited, they're a whole different group. I know there are Edge 705 releases out there to fix Powertap bugs (especially the wheel size computation). You were right before though, there's more focus on the 800.

Thanks for sticking with us. We love the products we make. I'm mostly involved in automotive engineering, and outside of work, I drive everywhere and do rally racing with my girlfriend. Wherever I go, there's a bunch of nuvis on the windshield. Many engineers in the aviation group are pilots. There are lots of employee-owned aircraft and there are probably close to 20 certified flight instructors here. The fitness engineers are almost all running or cycling fanatics. There's always really nice bicycles decked out with instrumentation in the hall or in their offices. We even sponsor a local marathon (and half-marathon and 5K). I guess I'm trying to say we take what we do seriously and have a personal interest in seeing our products work well for others, so we do the best we can.

Tell Me Again, Who Made The Desert Bloom?

Actually it's likely much worse. In Q3 ex Nokia CEO now mobile analyst Tomi Ahonen says worldwide market share is currently as low as 1-2%.

The Lumia launch isn't looking all too optimistic either.

Actually it's likely much worse. In Q3 ex Nokia CEO now mobile analyst Tomi Ahonen says worldwide market share is currently as low as 1-2%.

The Lumia launch isn't looking all too optimistic either.

I was aware of the N900. I still use an N800. I just didn't need an upgrade yet, and I was waiting for step 5 of the 5-step mass market process for Maemo (becoming concerned about bureaucratic interference when Meego became the company's strategy and they decided to dump Debian for Linux Foundation silliness), when the Elop Effect happened. So, no, I don't think the N900 was successful.

Right. And the Korean Internet is essentially a closed system anyway - if you want to see pages in Korean, they're almost always going to be made and hosted in Korea by a powerful local conglomerate, and closely regulated by a clueless authoritarian bureaucracy.

It takes several years for the sites that are big in the US to catch on in Korea, with Koreans scoffing all the way, supporting local sites as a matter of national pride, until suddenly the market shifts - and seemingly in a matter of weeks, hardly anyone uses the Korean site and the US site is the only cool thing to use.

Michael Hurt is one of the most insightful analysts of the Korean media and cultural scene. His blog "Scribblings of The Metropolitician" is well worth reading. Here's a brief section from one of his main posts about the Internet in Korea:
Some More Thoughts On the Korean Internet and Cultural Barriers to Content Production

I remember people back then laughing at Google's increased vigor in making headway in the Korean market, since Naver will NEVER lose its dominance, right? People laughed and said Google overly-American dedication to simplicity would NEVER go over in Korea, and its little attempts at coloring up the Google Korea site with cute little animations was something akin to pitiful. People also laughed when YouTube Korea rolled out, swearing up and down that they'd be crushed by the better resolution of the domestic sites. Those techheads missed the point.

I've been saying, since that post, as well as in "The Mis-execution of Korean UCC" in April 2007, when I continued criticizing the utter lack of content on Korean UCC, that the Korean Internet is woefully devoid of ideas, and pitifully cordoned off from the rest of the world. Like the Korean economy, this is not just a side-effect, but totally intentional and a key part of how it succeeds.

In the 2006 post, I called the Korean Internet a "jaebeol" system, which I very much think it is. Inherent in the system isn't a core of intensely creative people and ideas that find expression in a myriad different ways, that come together and combine in unpredictable ways.

For instance, who knew how the synergy between blogging, embeddable video, other social media such as Twitter, social bookmarking, and other things would come together? It's led to new forms of media, business models, and ways of disseminating information itself. It's changed pop culture, politics, and so many other fields in a real -- not gimmicky -- way.

The Korean Internet? With broadband that leaves the US in the dust, no real problem of a "digital divide", computers everywhere, a high degree of technical skill with all kinds of programs and electronic devices, and a youth culture that is deeply socially invested in the Internet -- where's the beef? Meaning -- where's the content?

Where are the new ideas? Why didn't Koreans invent YouTube, Digg, or Twitter, or even the concepts of blogging, podcasting, or social bookmarking? Where are the funky new business ideas, new revenue models, or even (and especially) THE CONTENT?

Another good article of his on the subject:
Facebook Taking Over Korea, as Predicted!"I made a bet with my 'Korean Wave and Media' class that I teach at Myongji University that Facebook would inevitably take over the Korean Internet. Whoa, they said. That's crazy. Nothing can beat Cyworld."

Right. And the Korean Internet is essentially a closed system anyway - if you want to see pages in Korean, they're almost always going to be made and hosted in Korea by a powerful local conglomerate, and closely regulated by a clueless authoritarian bureaucracy.

It takes several years for the sites that are big in the US to catch on in Korea, with Koreans scoffing all the way, supporting local sites as a matter of national pride, until suddenly the market shifts - and seemingly in a matter of weeks, hardly anyone uses the Korean site and the US site is the only cool thing to use.

Michael Hurt is one of the most insightful analysts of the Korean media and cultural scene. His blog "Scribblings of The Metropolitician" is well worth reading. Here's a brief section from one of his main posts about the Internet in Korea:
Some More Thoughts On the Korean Internet and Cultural Barriers to Content Production

I remember people back then laughing at Google's increased vigor in making headway in the Korean market, since Naver will NEVER lose its dominance, right? People laughed and said Google overly-American dedication to simplicity would NEVER go over in Korea, and its little attempts at coloring up the Google Korea site with cute little animations was something akin to pitiful. People also laughed when YouTube Korea rolled out, swearing up and down that they'd be crushed by the better resolution of the domestic sites. Those techheads missed the point.

I've been saying, since that post, as well as in "The Mis-execution of Korean UCC" in April 2007, when I continued criticizing the utter lack of content on Korean UCC, that the Korean Internet is woefully devoid of ideas, and pitifully cordoned off from the rest of the world. Like the Korean economy, this is not just a side-effect, but totally intentional and a key part of how it succeeds.

In the 2006 post, I called the Korean Internet a "jaebeol" system, which I very much think it is. Inherent in the system isn't a core of intensely creative people and ideas that find expression in a myriad different ways, that come together and combine in unpredictable ways.

For instance, who knew how the synergy between blogging, embeddable video, other social media such as Twitter, social bookmarking, and other things would come together? It's led to new forms of media, business models, and ways of disseminating information itself. It's changed pop culture, politics, and so many other fields in a real -- not gimmicky -- way.

The Korean Internet? With broadband that leaves the US in the dust, no real problem of a "digital divide", computers everywhere, a high degree of technical skill with all kinds of programs and electronic devices, and a youth culture that is deeply socially invested in the Internet -- where's the beef? Meaning -- where's the content?

Where are the new ideas? Why didn't Koreans invent YouTube, Digg, or Twitter, or even the concepts of blogging, podcasting, or social bookmarking? Where are the funky new business ideas, new revenue models, or even (and especially) THE CONTENT?

Another good article of his on the subject:
Facebook Taking Over Korea, as Predicted!"I made a bet with my 'Korean Wave and Media' class that I teach at Myongji University that Facebook would inevitably take over the Korean Internet. Whoa, they said. That's crazy. Nothing can beat Cyworld."

How can you even compare a damn CEO with someone who dedicated their life to making the world a better place?

There are good pols and bad pols, just like there are good businessmen and bad businessmen.

I didn't agree with a lot of Layton's policies though you have to hand it to a politician who came out in support of same sex marriage in 1988!

The fact is he's someone who went into politics for the right reasons, to help people, and he never lost his integrity or his courage.

Now I'm not a huge apple fan, I don't like how they lock down their systems, particularly how they're building this walled garden when you're going to find yourself with Apple storing all your data and deciding what programs you can run, and Steve Jobs is responsible for that vision.

But I truly believe he's a good man trying to make the world better, and even when I disagree with what he's doing I think the world is a lot better with him than without him, and I hope he sticks around.

Kept out of last place by Symbian? Only in the US. According to this analyst, worldwide WP7 has around 1% smartphone marketshare. Symbians "effectively dead" OS still had around 15% in Q2, outselling WP7 15 to 1.

Not to take away the point of your post of course, but the situation for WP7 seems actually much worse than what your link projects

Actually it might be a new beast entirely through combining the Osborne Effect and Ratner effect, to become the ultimate monster: The Elop effect!

More like Elop Effect.

Historically, the US government has not managed to collect more than 19 or 20 percent of GNP in tax revenue.

Err, kind of. It collected ~27% of GDP in 2006 (1, 2), and it collected north of 30% in 2000 (3). It'd be more accurate to say that, since the second world war and excluding the past five years, the US government hasn't managed to collect less than 19 or 20 percent of GDP. The fact that the tax take is now ~15% (ref) is a large part of why the US government has a bit of a problem, fiscally speaking.

It's also worth pointing out that even 30% would be low compared to most other developed countries; the OECD average is 35%, and going even higher than that would not be completely unreasonable. Places like Germany (37% tax take, 3.6% growth last year), Finland (43%, 3.1% growth), and Sweden (46%, 7.3% growth) aren't exactly struggling at the moment. This obviously doesn't mean that a high tax take implies a healthy economy (e.g. Spain (37%, 0.8%), Italy (44%, 1.1%), Portugal (35%, 1.4%)), but it does at least show that a tax take above 20% of GDP is not automatically an economic disaster.

(Admittedly, I'm using GDP rather than GNP, which makes the numbers slightly different. I'd argue that GDP more accurately approximates taxable activity in the US than GNP, since there are so many tricks which corporations can use to reduce US taxes paid on foreign earnings. In any case the difference is only a couple of percent and doesn't invalidate the point that a 20% effective tax rate would be unusually low for the US, and exceptionally low compared to other rich countries.)

You know, I was pretty sure it was on a flowchart template I was given when I started work. I still have it, somewhere.

Apparently I was wrong, but I do recall it being used in the way you suggest, vague memories of some EDI stuff I did many years ago.

Expand your ideas of the possible, friend.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lg9qnWg9kak
http://7d.blogs.com/stuckinvt/2008/11/tiny-houses-105.html

A 22-inch wall of cob is great even at that scale if it's keeping you comfortable. If you need to build tiny, there are ways to make it quite livable. If that means being free from a huge mortgage, I'm all for it.

http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2011/03/more-app-store-economics-case-study-of-10m-download-game-monetized-through-ads-how-much-money.html

Made IBM largely irrelevant, didn't he? Bill still has no rivals when it comes to running a business. You think Nokia would learn...

This is a good read on the whole matter. Writing's a bit crude in some parts but raises some good points.

These charts also illustrate the point. Nokia is alienating both its development community and its customers. Qt is put on the sidelines. Who's going to develop for a dying platform? A lot of people I know buy Symbian because of the generally familiar UI, which is similar to the Series 40 phones. Windows Phone is radically different.

Ugh.

If you write a mobile application and sell it, Symbian users and the OS itself isn't really forgiving when it comes to quality of code. They aren't really used to crashes, restarting phone, low battery life and sluggishness.

So how do you sell these guys (and girls) some 1.0 OS with a real bad reputation of 3rd party app quality which even lacks copy/paste? I mean for some idiots behind agreement, it is like N8 owner who has been abandoned by Nokia will run to market and buy Windows 1.01 Nokia handset when it ships. Trust me, they actually believe that.

Funny is, even markets didn't buy it.

I wouldn't be surprised if Nokia maintains legacy dumbphone support (on Symbian) for a while until the developing nations can be switched to smartphones (or when low end smartphones can run Windows Mobile 7 which should happen in a few years). On the other hand, I think MeeGo on smartphones is cooked since Microsoft is no Amigo (when it comes to linux + Qt). As others have speculated, this is very bad news for the Trolls since they will probably be turned into zombies. I would not be surprised to see Intel buy the Qt division and pursue MeeGo for in vehicle infotainment which is where MeeGo got its first win (via the GenIVI alliance).

This ex-Nokia executive's blog makes for interesting reading.

This is a good read on the whole matter. Writing's a bit crude in some parts but raises some good points.

These charts also illustrate the point. Nokia is alienating both its development community and its customers. Qt is put on the sidelines. Who's going to develop for a dying platform? A lot of people I know buy Symbian because of the generally familiar UI, which is similar to the Series 40 phones. Windows Phone is radically different.

Ugh.

No, not always sometimes the shows have to pay the company when a product it is used in the show. Otherwise shows could place any product they wished without retribution. Why do you think there are so many generic products in a show? Take for instance, a family eating breakfast cereal on a sitcom. They don't pass around Cheerios or Fruit Loops. They may pass around "Wheat Os" or some made-up product.

Either way there has to be an agreement before the show uses said product. If the show does not get permission first, then the company has a viable lawsuit. There are many lawsuits that happen over product placement. On the side of caution, TV and film should not depict any products until they have permission. Who pays depends on who benefits most from the relationship. Sometimes the company wants their product and will pay for it. Sometimes, the show or film has to pay the company if the company is reluctant. Sometimes no agreement can be reached. For Toy Story, many of the toy companies were willing for their toys to be depicted. Barbie was not in Toy Story because Mattel refused to license the character. It wasn't until the success of the first film that Tour Guide Barbie was shown in the sequel.

This looks like something from a Nokia fanboy, but it has some interesting numbers: http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2010/12/some-symbian-sanity-why-nokia-will-not-join-google-android-or-microsoft-phone-7.html

"The analysts want to position Nokia against Apple, it makes for good drama and a fun parlor game. But then they don't do fair analysis of Nokia. Nokia is not competing against Apple. Nokia's business is the phones business. The PC industry sells about 300 million personal computers of which Apple had about 4% last year. Most of the computer industry last year was not 'mobile'. The mobile phone industry sells about 1.3 Billion handsets globally, and Nokia had about 38% of that last year. Yes, Nokia alone sells more mobile phones than the total global size of the personal computer industry worldwide."

Bill Cosby advertising

oh yeah? Well my old computer had Alan Alda shilling for it!

just to settle the issue of celeberty microcomputer advertising:
Bill Cosby < Alan Alda < William Shatner < Iassic Asimov
hmmm, Leonard Nimoy should be in there somewhere, right? (what? no endorsements from DeForest Kelley, James Doohan, Nichelle Nichols, George Takei or Walter Koenig I smell parody potential! Come on, George!)
and photographic proof Apple is out to turn you whole family GAY!
Jack Black?!!!

And a lot of people have turned $1 into millions of dollars with a lottery ticket, but that doesn't mean people who buy lottery tickets aren't morons.. While there are success stories, the economics for the average developer may not be quite so bright, as this article suggests. It may not be dead on and things have probably changed somewhat with iAds, but it probably isn't a good choice by itself.

Being an App Store developer is on average a profitable proposition

Not even by a long shot. Tomi Ahonen did the actual numbers in a blog post a while back:

The development of the typical app cost $35,000 and the median paid app earns $682 dollars per year after Apple took its cut. You see where this is going.. We get to break even on our App Development costs in... 51 years - http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2010/06/full-analysis-of-iphone-economics-its-bad-news-and-then-it-gets-worse.html

Don't look at the outliers.

(and read the post before attacking the numbers, they're well sourced)

And after much research, here's my reply to this rumor.

Judge Kozinski is beyond awesome, in so many ways.

ummm.... j doe you live 4.5 miles from the event. I smell lawyer. I call it LIBEL. Tickets start at $99.50 as of today 8/11/10 at 8:08pm EST. for tickets http://www.milehighmusicfestival.com/buy-tickets/ticket-info for the LIBEL http://reporter.blogs.com/files/cod-03902958132.pdf sorry can't effort the purchase. anyone else?

I want to understand your approach to arguments because you don't make any sense

I suspect that's because you lack reading comprehension.

You're asking parent to argue why you should broaden your admittedly narrow mind in regards to political discourse.

No, actually I didn't ask that. Saying things like this is what made me question your reading comprehension. I didn't say anything like that at all. I asked the parent to come up with a better argument to support any point than, "Europe does it." Europe has kings. The fact that Europe does something doesn't make it necessarily better or worse.

Just because it's done in Europe isn't an argument alone but there are a great many examples of centralized health-care for instance that haven't bankrupted countries. Hell, a friend of mind got mugged in Barcelona, she was even a foreigner and they took care of her injuries and helped her in a number of ways from assisting her to the embassy since her passport was stolen. Just an example, there are failures in the Spanish system too but arguably they relate directly to funding but it means that health-care won't bankrupt people. Many call this socialist but in reality it is quite centrist, it only appears socialist due to the narrow range inflicted on the political spectrum in the U.S.

Indeed, and if it were compared to communist Russia it would be far on the right of the spectrum. Left and right are by nature relative. In the United States, it makes sense to call people who want a single-payer system on the left, because otherwise you would just be saying everyone is on the right, and the terms would use their usefulness. 'Left' and 'right' are different in every country, because every country has different issues they are dealing with.

Completely off-topic, but it's rather ironic that you pick the case of Spain to talk about healthcare, since Spain is right behind Greece on the bankruptcy list. Germany, England, Spain, and France all have larger public debts as percentage of GDP than the US, although the US has certainly made an effort to close the gap in the last year.

Course going to war means we can't afford it now, but taxes are gonna go up so that should help ease the pain a bit.

This is also off-topic, but look at taxes as a percentage of GDP sometime. Although the tax rates have varied greatly, the income doesn't change too much. Here is a graph. Look at 1945, when congress raised the maximum tax bracket to 94%....it stayed over 94% until 1964 (look at the federal government revenues, the blue line). If you look at the timeline of the Bush tax cuts (easier to see here), you can see that at first revenue dropped, but by 2005 it had already reached average levels. It is not likely that the Democrats will be able to enact a tax increase that raises revenue the needed amount without plunging the country into a severe depression.

Also, the main problem the US is facing fiscally is not "Bush tax cuts" or "Obama overspending" but rather it is the fact that baby boomers are retiring and stressing the system.....the US for years has promised to pay for their retirement without saving enough money to actually pay for it. Other countries are facing this problem as well.

Much of the public INSIST on being addressed in Newspeak. The social changes that now require obfuscation and euphemism can't be blamed on the politicians, they are a result of political correctness interfering with clear communication. Social ritual requires PC-speak.

Direct communication is more effective, and can be done with style.

General James Mattis:

"I come in peace. I didn't bring artillery. But I'm pleading with you, with tears in my eyes: If you fuck with me, I'll kill you all"-

and

"Actually it's quite fun to fight them, you know. It's a hell of a hoot," Mattis said, prompting laughter from some military members in the audience. "It's fun to shoot some people. I'll be right up there with you. I like brawling.

http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2006/08/lt_gen_james_ma.html