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At it's peak in the 60's, NASA was drawing about 10% of the country's entire GDP

Where'd you get your numbers? I thought it was much smaller. https://carriedaway.blogs.com/... is the best source I could find. Says it was 0.75%

The real competition for android is AOSP.

Last time I saw the numbers* for Mobile OS market share:

Android total: 81%
- Google's Android: 55%
- AOSP Android: 27%

- iOS Total: 18%

- Other: 1%
% do not add up due to rounding errors

So, phase 1, embrace Google's Android, while mantaining compatibility with AOSP.

Phase 2: Extend AOSP, giving it functional equivalents to the functions Google keeps behind the Google Play Services, that have either no equivalents in AOSP, or Delerict APIs

Phase 3: I hope they do not extinguish Google's Android, but at least lessen Alphabet's grip on the mobile market. This monoculture is as bad (or worse) for us than the Windows desktop and browser monopoly was in the 90's and 00's.

* Numbers come from here:
http://communities-dominate.bl...

Sorry for not posting the full link, /. threw a filter error

I do not agree with all that Tomi wites, and I do not like his writting style, but I give it to him, he has the best publicly available numbers, and I thank him for give them away for free.

Apple has like a paltry 1% share.

iOS still has a 14% market share on smartphones. Source.

What Nokia overlooked was mindshare & influence. America might have been a minor market, but it was a hugely INFLUENTIAL market.

Huh... nope.
The reason behind the downfall of Nokia is that basically Elop and Microsoft happened to them.
Who did a tons of horribly bad decision that dragged down Nokia.

There are some people who have written at great lenght analyzing the subject. (Basically, Nokia disappeared from the carrier's own store due to making tons of bad decisions that alienated them, and that's the reason they disappeared from the US market. They also completely neglected the market where they were dominant and thus got their lunch eaten by cheap chinese android nonames).

It's also sweet that you think that just what a few bloggers speak about in the US will have such a big influence world-wide (though it partially happens around Apple and feature that get copied from them).
Do you think that companies pop from the ground like mushrooms ? One of the reasons that companies like Huawei have managed to become dominant is that they had build momentum taking over other markets. They became popular in countries looking for cheap Android phone. They have built manufacturing capacity, they have worked through the various kinks of early model and have an actual offering by the time they seek to replace a vacant niche in the US market.
They are the manufacturer who are already pushing shit tons of phones through aliexpress unto BRICS countries.

Elop's burning platform memo was not openness, it was not excessive honesty -- it was sabotage.

The memo was full of lies. Symbian was still the market leader, massively profitable, and it was expected to remain like that for years, even with Android encroaching. Nokia still had time to work on MeeGo, their situation was not desperate. Except that stupid memo caused the sudden collapse of their smartphone business.

It is obvious now: Elop thought this would force a move to Windows Phone. Because that was his true allegiance, he was there to peddle Microsoft's garbage, even if it killed Nokia! Too bad for him, there was another company ready to fill this vacuum: Samsung, more than any other Android manufacturer, made billions from Elop's idiocy.

a useful link with a long history of how the Elop/Microsoft massacre happened upon Nokia.

With Apple's ~40% market share

Globally, it's 14%.

the best option is to completely abandon the manufacturer, unlock the bootloader and install a different operating system in the hopes it will remain better supported.

Example of a different operating system with commercial support : Sailfish X (for Sony Xperia X) by Jolla, the former Nokia engineer who were working on Maemo/Meego for the N700/N800/N900/N9 series before Elop and Microsoft happened to them.

That's another alternative possibility to the usual suspects (like LineageOS, etc.)

(Note: NOT Android based at all - except for the platform drivers, it's still GNU/Linux under the hood like back when at Nokia).

Regarding phones fromOnePlus, Jolla doesn't currently have an official line of products, but there's a vibrant community so a community port might show up in talk.maemo.org

For my next phone I'm gonna pony up and buy one with a pure full GNU Linux distro.

The problem is that there aren't many thing on the market yet.

Best contenders are :

• Jolla they are the former Nokia engineers that used to work the Maemo/Meego system for Nokia'sr N800 / N900 / N9 series of phones until the whole Elop/Microsoft disaster shit-show happened.
  Now they are making Sailfish OS which is a continuation of the same development (but have now renamed the core from Meego to mer).
  They used to have some inhouse hardware (Jolla 1 Phone) then some manufacturer failure (Jolla Tablet), then some third party partner ship (Jolla C / Intex Aquasih). Their latest product is Sailfish X, done in partnership with Sony Open Devices, to Install Sailfish X on Sony Xperia X (single SIM version [the dual sim version isn't officially supported, but according to forum it works too), *not SIM-locked only* [SIM-locked phone cannot have their bootloader unlocked]). It's still an early beta, but if you're patient and willing to through the first few months of bugs, it might be worth giving it a try
  it's a full blown GNU/Linux under the hood, using modern features like Wayland, Systemd, etc. using RPM repositories for software distribution and significative developper community.
  Darbacks for your specific target is that to make deployment on smartphone easier, it does rely on same (closed source) drivers that the chipset manufacturer provide for smartphone (using an adaptation layer called libhybris), so you still have manufacturer blobs, and some bits of the infeface still aren't under a copy-left license yet (but Jolla plans to, and in the main time the source is visible any way, as the interface is mostly QML and Javascript anyway. With lots of patches available in the communities too)
• Purism has successfully crowdfunded their librem 5 smartphone.
  Good news is that they plan to develop a 100% pure Linux opensource phone with no blobs (partly by selecting chip with 100% opensource support, and partly by isolating problematic chips like baseband modem into separate chips that only communicate with the main chipset over a standard protocole - there's no "baseband modem actually serving as the chipset's northbridge" as in Qualcomm)
  the drawbacks are that it's still in development (obviously), and that it uses a chipset that is either completely antique (currently their test are done on Freescale i.MX6, because that the only one with 100% opensource drivers supported by upstream kernel) or might be less exciting than other phone (they hope to be able to shift to FreeScale i.MX 8 as opensource support improves).
  they plan pure linux interfaces, mostly gnome and KDE Plasma Active (yet another QML-based interface).
• Samsung is doing Tizen, which is a distant cousin of the Meego/Maemo family. But I don't know how much there is an active community

And I think that's about all currently active project of GNU/Linux phones, now that Ubuntu Touch has dropped the ball.

(Also, not interesting for you, but Sailfish OS, on their official commercial product support a proprietary compatibility layer - Alien-Dalvik by Myriad - that enables Android Apps (though currently only at 4.4 KitKat level).
Purism has promised to consider some container based solution (andbox -based, perhaps ?) to bring compatibility to Android Apps.
Tizen can download from their application store OpenMobile's Application Compatibility Layer.

So none of these will suffer from "not part of a big app ecosystem" networking effect)

Can you expand a bit on how very strong Nokia's position was, the moment that iPhone went on sale?

Here's an overly long rant by an analyst, with lots of details of what went wrong.

I certainly don't remember things that way.

Part of this boils down "In my tiny corner of the world, everybody flocked en masse to the Jesus Phone !" - "Yeah but not all the planet Earth follows what happens to be popular in California, and billions of people can't afford Apple overpriced iGadgets while these billions are still in need of some portable communication tools, and Nokia phones are serving them better than anything".

After the release of iPhone Nokia was basically insanely huge everywhere except in the US (more precisely in the specific sub-market of high range smartphone in the US).
In terms of absolute unit shipped or total revenue, that *still* put them ahead of every one else.

Is called AOSP.

You see, Android and AOSP are different enough, that AOSP qualifies as a third OS all into itself. AOSP is a very fragmented third OS (API wise) and playing catchup with Google's Android Proper, since the only commonality (APP wise) is in some APIs that are delerict and whose advanced functionality migrated long ago to GooglePlayStore/Services APIs. Android can run most APPs that AOSP can run, but AOSP can not run some of android's APPs, due to the use of APIs and Services tied to propiertary parts of Android

But AOSP is very big in places Like South East Asia and LatAm (where the growth is baby!), also, in places where Google services and APPs are not available, or are not the most popular. Also, some big players (like Amazon in it's tablets) have embraces AOSP.

Currently, AOSP has a 26% market share (bigger than iOS'), iOS has a 18% market share and Google's Android has something like 55% of the 3223 Million Smartphones currently in active use worldwide...

If anything has a chance to suceed in the short and medium term to fight the duopoly of Android/iOS, is a broad agreement among players for a sort of universal API to challenge the GooglePlayStore/Services APIs that are present in android but not on AOSP.

This comment is brought you by a Cellular Operator Engineer, Manager and technical trainer in LatAm rocking a Blackberry Q10 with BBOS 10.3.3.

http://communities-dominate.bl...

the iPhone's market share is around 15%.

Not quite. Apple's installed base is 18%, but their market share has fallen to 11.5% as of Q2 2017. (source)

None of that seems to explain though why the trolls win in this lower court so often? Especially in stupid cases like this where on appeals all the judges are looking at each other like "HOW did this possibly make it to us? no. just NO. Now go away."

If it all came down to "they have the time to deal with it and have the most experience", you'd expect better and more consistent judgements. Or are some of the defendants just doing stupid things? (I can't imagine Apple/IBM/MS sending incompetent lawyers to a patent trial)

Well, in this particular one, this is a changing area of law. The Alice Corp. decision only came out last year, and this trial started before that.
Additionally, there's a bit of a selection bias. Plaintiffs don't file million-dollar lawsuits on patents they know will lose, and they certainly don't proceed through trial and appeal on those patents. But even still, the average last year was less than 50%.

What Apple gets is simple. Stability, sanity and some level of honesty in the face of huge temptation and fear.

You only have to look at Nokia to see what can happen if the wrong people get onto the board of a company. Somehow or other, the Nokia board managed to convince its self that a company which had managed to survive multiple revolutions in mobile communications was best led by a man who had failed repeatedly to build mobile success at Microsoft. The results are well known (image from this article).

Why the did this I have no idea. Panic? Bribes? Stupidity? There has been no clear criminal investigation when there should have been but it seems they were just taken in by fear and a smooth talking failure in Elop. Still, the point is that now Apple may be in a similar situation. They have various long term technologies which won't pay off immediately. Nokia was doing Meego, it's own independent touch screen OS; Apple is doing it's own smart phone chips. They will now be under pressure from Chinese rivals and will go both down as well as up. If you keep working on these technologies you will survive and profit but you are very likely to suffer some relative decline even so. If your board panics and changes everything to try to force growth in a market where there is no more space, you may lose everything that you already have.

No idea if Gore is the right guy, however I know how much could be lost if he's the wrong one. Apple's profits, around $40Billion yearly, are more than ten times Nokia's. Imagine those disappeared in two years because Apple became involved in someone like Microsoft and brought in someone like Elop.

Extremely well stated!

What Apple gets is simple. Stability, sanity and some level of honesty in the face of huge temptation and fear.

You only have to look at Nokia to see what can happen if the wrong people get onto the board of a company. Somehow or other, the Nokia board managed to convince its self that a company which had managed to survive multiple revolutions in mobile communications was best led by a man who had failed repeatedly to build mobile success at Microsoft. The results are well known (image from this article).

Why the did this I have no idea. Panic? Bribes? Stupidity? There has been no clear criminal investigation when there should have been but it seems they were just taken in by fear and a smooth talking failure in Elop. Still, the point is that now Apple may be in a similar situation. They have various long term technologies which won't pay off immediately. Nokia was doing Meego, it's own independent touch screen OS; Apple is doing it's own smart phone chips. They will now be under pressure from Chinese rivals and will go both down as well as up. If you keep working on these technologies you will survive and profit but you are very likely to suffer some relative decline even so. If your board panics and changes everything to try to force growth in a market where there is no more space, you may lose everything that you already have.

No idea if Gore is the right guy, however I know how much could be lost if he's the wrong one. Apple's profits, around $40Billion yearly, are more than ten times Nokia's. Imagine those disappeared in two years because Apple became involved in someone like Microsoft and brought in someone like Elop.

Extremely well stated!

What Apple gets is simple. Stability, sanity and some level of honesty in the face of huge temptation and fear.

You only have to look at Nokia to see what can happen if the wrong people get onto the board of a company. Somehow or other, the Nokia board managed to convince its self that a company which had managed to survive multiple revolutions in mobile communications was best led by a man who had failed repeatedly to build mobile success at Microsoft. The results are well known (image from this article).

Why the did this I have no idea. Panic? Bribes? Stupidity? There has been no clear criminal investigation when there should have been but it seems they were just taken in by fear and a smooth talking failure in Elop. Still, the point is that now Apple may be in a similar situation. They have various long term technologies which won't pay off immediately. Nokia was doing Meego, it's own independent touch screen OS; Apple is doing it's own smart phone chips. They will now be under pressure from Chinese rivals and will go both down as well as up. If you keep working on these technologies you will survive and profit but you are very likely to suffer some relative decline even so. If your board panics and changes everything to try to force growth in a market where there is no more space, you may lose everything that you already have.

No idea if Gore is the right guy, however I know how much could be lost if he's the wrong one. Apple's profits, around $40Billion yearly, are more than ten times Nokia's. Imagine those disappeared in two years because Apple became involved in someone like Microsoft and brought in someone like Elop.

What Apple gets is simple. Stability, sanity and some level of honesty in the face of huge temptation and fear.

You only have to look at Nokia to see what can happen if the wrong people get onto the board of a company. Somehow or other, the Nokia board managed to convince its self that a company which had managed to survive multiple revolutions in mobile communications was best led by a man who had failed repeatedly to build mobile success at Microsoft. The results are well known (image from this article).

Why the did this I have no idea. Panic? Bribes? Stupidity? There has been no clear criminal investigation when there should have been but it seems they were just taken in by fear and a smooth talking failure in Elop. Still, the point is that now Apple may be in a similar situation. They have various long term technologies which won't pay off immediately. Nokia was doing Meego, it's own independent touch screen OS; Apple is doing it's own smart phone chips. They will now be under pressure from Chinese rivals and will go both down as well as up. If you keep working on these technologies you will survive and profit but you are very likely to suffer some relative decline even so. If your board panics and changes everything to try to force growth in a market where there is no more space, you may lose everything that you already have.

No idea if Gore is the right guy, however I know how much could be lost if he's the wrong one. Apple's profits, around $40Billion yearly, are more than ten times Nokia's. Imagine those disappeared in two years because Apple became involved in someone like Microsoft and brought in someone like Elop.

Actually, I think the responses to Trump's comments actually need a "woosh".

He's being unpresidential, but

There is an alternate theory of why he's being unpresidential. He always planned to lose and go bankrupt. Unfortunately, like Boris Johnson, the more stupid things he says, the further he seems to get. I'm not sure he can escape from a trap of his own making.

I don't think "whooooosh" is going to cut it at the end of that.

Trump has the good idea of being new blood. He's already wealthy beyond his own needs

Is he really wealthy, though? Or is it all smoke and mirrors? This article suggests that his whole campaign is a money-making scam, and as has been pointed out elsewhere he may have made less than $500,000 in 2015.

And no, he is not crazy, nor racist

No, he is only channelling Hitler: Just exchanging Jews for Muslims and Mexicans. Technically, that's not racism, practically, it's no different.

The press release by Nokia and affiliated companies has it, that the new phones will be 'based on Android', which may mean, that they might again opt for the AOSP version, as they did with Nokia X. The use of AOSP automatically excludes all of the Googe cruft, but users would be wont to install some of it in order to get the YouTube app (most important) and some other Google apps (some might want Google Drive). If Nokia/HMD are smart, then they might include Here for maps and maybe some other useful stuff, but without the useless software that most smartphone makers add.

One possible reason for a relatively complicated 'four-way' arrangement (as per Tomi Ahonen) could be the licencing deals. As had been reported in the past, then as they are, the current deals are informed by Nokia's past sale of its former Devices and Services division (the one that made phones) to Microsoft.

According to reports in the public, the conditions of that sale to Microsoft had it, that Microsoft got only the design patents, but not the utility patents (the actual war chest, that is, which is still with Nokia), then in all likelihood a license to use Nokia's utility patents, and a ten-year license to use the Nokia brand on basic phones and featurephones, but not on smartphones (Microsoft could keep the Lumia brand for smartphones); while Nokia was barred from entering the smartphone business until this year (2016).

What happened, was, that Nokia had only licensed its brand to Microsoft for use on featurephones for ten years. Microsoft had used up about two years of it, and is now selling the remaining years to Foxconn's subsidiary FIH. That license is set to expire in 2024. As I understand it, then HMD appears to be a Nokia subsidiary that bought out some of Microsoft's smartphone stuff that Microsoft got from Nokia, but excluding Lumia, which Microsoft can keep.

My best guess for a play with subsidiaries could be:
* the temporary nature of how the Nokia brand was licensed to Microsoft, and
* the assumption, that if Nokia/HMD are to release an AOSP-based Android (code-compatible with Android proper, but without its branding and Google stuff), then Nokia proper and Foxconn proper might be unable to sell devices with an AOSP-based Android, given that both Nokia and Foxconn are (on assumption) members of the Open Handset Alliance (OHA), which bars alternative, if code-compatible, versions of Android other than what Google mandates.

Tomi Ahonen's post about Nokia's potentially glorious return

Yeah, and we have the right to ignore them. We use that right :))
Besides, 99,99% of internet ad companies are malware distributing pools, and 2/3 of the "clicks" they register are fake clicks by their customers.
So they better go die, and be replaced by a more respectful model.
http://communities-dominate.bl...

Yay! Best high-modded post I've seen.

So based on these numbers for "All NTs", you'd expect to see about a 2:1 male:female ratio in the industry. Let's test this against the real-world data.

What we see is that there was indeed a time when we saw that ratio in CS programs. It was back in 1984. Today, its greater than 5:1. So something else, starting in 1984, happened to CS. Also, it only happened to CS. Not Law School, not Medical School, not the physical sciences. Just CS. For example, INTJ is supposedly the best personality type for scientists. M-B would predict a 5:1 ratio there. Today women are north of 40% of students in the physical sciences.

Conclusions:

1. Meyer's Briggs personality types do not explain the gender distribution in CS
2. Meyer's Briggs personality types do not have the data to explain the difference between the delta between CS and other "INTJ" career types.
3. Meyer's Briggs personality types do not explain the gender distribution in the Physical Sciences. There's a good chance they won't for other careers, if checked.

The fact that 48% of first programmers are women does nothing to show more women are getting into programming. It is entirely possible (and maybe probable) that it's been 48% for a long time,

It hasn't been. For instance, here's a graph showing CS undergrad degrees (which ought to correlate a fair bit) plotted against the rate at which women enroll for other degrees. For every other degree there's a steady upward trend, but for women something weird happened in 1984 and they peaked there at about 37%. Last year (assuming I'm reading it right) only about 18% of CS undergrads were women. If there's been a big spike up, that's encouraging to see.

FWIW, I got my degree in '89 and this jibes pretty well with my experience. After my first year in the industry, when yes about a third of my coworkers were women, I had seemingly fewer female colleagues every year. My immediate development group has had no females in it since I started here in 1998, until this summer when we had a female intern for a few months.

One wonders why someone would speculate on this subject, when data is easily available. It really amazes me the length (male) people will go to in order to argue that there's no real problem here. I guess some guys really like living in 1975. Ugh.

He's still missing a big opportunity: the enterprise. Why everyone is clamoring for the crumbs of the consumer pie, I don't understand. Enterprise functionality is being ignored forcing us to adopt strange concepts like BYOD which is a logistical nightmare and security concern. Dominate the enterprise and the consumer market will follow. Gates knew this. Balmer seemed more interested in chasing the heels of the current trend as most sales guys do. And now I'm not sure what to think about this new guy... But he seems to be still missing the point.

Problem is, when it comes to mobile it's consumer first; so Enterprise is following the consumer. They're adapting to strategies that make it easier to manage unmanaged devices to enable BYOD. Why? Because mobile has a very short lifespan (2 years) and Enterprises don't want to dump so much money into it. They'd rather their employees BYOD and sink money into mobile while they reap the benefits. The costs of integrating iPhone and Android is a pitance compared to the cost of buying and managing a fleet of mobile devices that have to be replaced every 2 years.

It'd be one thing if mobile devices had a lifespan similar to PCs - which are replaced every 3-4 years at best, if not closer to 6-8 years. But that's not the case.

As to Microsoft's specific problems in mobile, http://communities-dominate.bl... is a very good read.

I have a Windows Phone. I love it, and really wish that it had taken off. But my feelings don't change the economic reality, which is that I can get to those desktop users just fine with either a Win32 application or a web app. The only reason to write a WinRT/Modern/Store/whatever-they're-calling-it-today app it to reach that additional 1% of the uses with a Windows Phone.

You should read http://communities-dominate.bl...

I particularly enjoy reading from the Communities Dominate Brands to see where the cell phone market is going.
He's been pretty much spot on in regards to Nokia and predicted that Microsoft would do cut to the Lumia brand which is part of today's headlines on /.

"I'm gonna see it! I want it to be as beautiful as possible, even if it's inside the box. A great carpenter isn't going to use lousy wood for the back of a cabinet, even though nobody's going to see it." This is Steve Jobs pushing the Macintosh team to redesign the circuit board because some of the spacing was ugly.

Steve Jobs also pushed them to make it boot as fast as possible, rejected computer fans because of noise, and said a multibutton mouse would be inelegant. He went to great pains to make the Apple Store out of glass. Even his slides were Zen.

He was a complex character. He certainly wasn't your typical businessman:

"My passion has been to build an enduring company where people were motivated to make great products . . . the products, not the profits, were the motivation. Sculley flipped these priorities to where the goal was to make money. It's a subtle difference, but it ends up meaning everything."

>> and some that are straight up dumb, and they're still coming out with new models, confusingly still bearing the "Nokia" brand.

Why should they give up or rename their most profitable business (as of phones)?

http://communities-dominate.bl...

As part of their deal with the devil, aka Microsoft, there's a non-compete clause -- Nokia can't make cell phones until 2016. Rumors are strong -- even thought they have to keep quiet for now -- that Nokia fully intends to come back to the handset business; the N1 tablet and Z Launcher are a solid hint of what's to come.

With a similar anniversary of flight 17 shot by Russia-sponsored assholes in Eastern Ukraine (by mistake), Russian propaganda is spreading lunatic rumors about America shooting down MH370.

They don't have to convince anybody with such accusations. They just need to make enough noise to make the perfectly credible accusations against them look similarly lunatic to the short attention-span majority of the world's population...

Of course it affects virtual reality characters, second life users have known this for YEARS.

http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2014/...

http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2006/...

http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2011/...

http://www.pixelsandpolicy.com...

Of course it affects virtual reality characters, second life users have known this for YEARS.

http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2014/...

http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2006/...

http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2011/...

http://www.pixelsandpolicy.com...

Of course it affects virtual reality characters, second life users have known this for YEARS.

http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2014/...

http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2006/...

http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2011/...

http://www.pixelsandpolicy.com...

http://presentationzen.blogs.c...
Yawn.
Are you now going to say, "but that is 2005!"
Apple didn't have to force anything on anyone. That's not what antitrust laws are about. The fact is, they used their leverage of a monopoly in one market to harm players in another market.

This is in particular a contradiction. If Gamers are over then why do a portion of those PC Gamer Enthusiasts continue to buy Intel's processors for a premium which happens to pay for the advertising?

I think she's referring to self-identified gamers. The ones who would call themselves "hardcore". You know who they are, the 19 year olds playing LoL and calling themselves "athletes". There's plenty of people who play games a lot, maybe even playing more hours than those PC gamer enthusiasts, who don't identify as gamers.

I play games, but I don't exactly identify as a gamer in the way that these "gamers upset about the articles do", more as a nerd who plays games. When I look at the staff of game magazines and websites, I don't see "me", I see a bunch of dudebro johnny come late-lies who only started playing when sports games got better looking and then started playing Halo and CoD. And the games they give so much space to..are "their" games. Multiple page coverage of Halo-fanboy favorite Destiny and other games get short shrift.

Me, I've been playing games longer than many of these self identified "True Gamers" have been alive. I've played mostly console, but have done a PC game now and then.

Some people see "Gamer" as exclusionary in the same way they might see "Foodie" (Self identified "Foodies" can get just as possesive about their "hobby" as the self-identified "Gamers" do)

http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2014/...

While I feel more kinship to the term "gamer" than Iris/Janine does, I see her point. Because to the LoL/MOBA/TF2/CS:Go fanboys, I'm not a "real gamer" because I don't play those games.

Intel has pulled an advertising campaign from video gaming website Gamasutra after it reportedly received a number of complaints from self-identified gamers upset that the site was championing fair gender representation in video games.

When you write:

However, Women's Rights activist/advocates should be firmly expressing their disdain towards this horrible movement of Femi-nazi's.

Why? When people point out that "gamer" no longer includes just a small hard-core subset of males who orgasm over every new video card and think that all female characters in games should have "vital statistics" that would put a Barbie doll to shame, they're not being "femi-nazis." The appeal of games like Minecraft (58% female) shows that the word "gamer" is either an archaism or needs to be updated to include the new reality.

If the old guard doesn't like that women are "invading their space", they need to realize that it's simply not just "their space" any more.

You are missing the point.

Most gamers, male and female alike, just want to play video games. They want to be able to simply ask, "Hey, wanna play Street Fighter/Quake/Halo/Warcraft/etc?" without any drama, and 99% of the time that is how it goes amongst friends. Random idiots online are trying to get a rise out of you, don't pay attention to them. For most gamers, it doesn't matter if someone is male or female. There are plenty of creepy males and females online, but they're not the norm.

http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/girls-and-software is related to the above statement.

Apparently, also, Anita Sarkeesian, being a horrible human being undeserving of the attention they get, may have very well fabricated the death threats against herself. http://www.staresattheworld.com/2014/09/anita-sarkeesian-fabricate-story-contacting-authorities/

The major, and salient, point is the fact that there is an endemic corruption in journalism as pertains to gaming. Not just that, but most of them, except for IGN strangely enough, are connected to a sort of PR company (Silverstring Media) that is more focused on generating controversy than on anything related to gaming, equality of sexes, improved representation of strong women in video games, etc.

They're pushing a hardline, militant form of feminism, attempting to pervert the word further to gain more legitimacy, Feminism used to be about equality of the sexes, removing all institutionalized discrimination and attempting to foster an environment more conducive to viewing each other as equals, or perhaps even, view each other as just other human beings. Rather than "that black dude", or "that asian chick", etc, you think of them as people like yourself.

Another equally important point is the over-exaggeration of all gamers (and I myself view anyone who sets aside some of their free time specifically for playing a video game of SOME SORT (computer, console, handheld, cellphone even!) to be a gamer, hardcore gamer being the more nebulous term) as being mysogynists and constant desire to sexualize women in games as if their lives depended on it. I understand, in say, Dragon's Crown that the male characters are probably not even close to every woman's fantasy of their perfect man, and that the female characters (except the thief, whom is more modestly dressed) are quite sexualized... But I can accept the ridiculousness, you know why? It's all part of the game's style and aesthetics. Most of it is ridiculous!

Take a look at Mount & Blade, without any modifications mind, and play as a woman. You put on plate armor, it's the same shape as men's armor, because boob-plate would be ridiculous in a game attempting some realism (and make melee blows more likely to strike the center of the chest). There are other games like that, and other games that are on the more ridiculous sexualization side, though I feel it'd be better to

Intel has pulled an advertising campaign from video gaming website Gamasutra after it reportedly received a number of complaints from self-identified gamers upset that the site was championing fair gender representation in video games.

When you write:

However, Women's Rights activist/advocates should be firmly expressing their disdain towards this horrible movement of Femi-nazi's.

Why? When people point out that "gamer" no longer includes just a small hard-core subset of males who orgasm over every new video card and think that all female characters in games should have "vital statistics" that would put a Barbie doll to shame, they're not being "femi-nazis." The appeal of games like Minecraft (58% female) shows that the word "gamer" is either an archaism or needs to be updated to include the new reality.

If the old guard doesn't like that women are "invading their space", they need to realize that it's simply not just "their space" any more.

The strip isn't what I was talking about, actually - that strip was Democrat-controlled. There were a bunch of other districts that were redrawn at the same time, and only the Democratic one was found to be infringing. Here's a map of the districts after they were struck down. They're still just as fucked up, but unlike the 23rd in my original image, none of them can be considered to be racially drawn - which was the only reason the 23rd was struck down.

I noticed this comment had got a five early on...basing on assumptions that the big powerful USA has all the money its smartphone ownership percentage should be highest, I find this astonishing.

The link at the bottom is linked to(Slashdot will not accept a direct link) to Googles amazing tool where TNS have released their survey data on 54 countries and ownership of smartphones, and guess what USA is only the 19th country of percentage of smartphone ownership per person, drawing with Canada. India is already at 7%, and that is without phones dropping to $30; Google is targeting India with the Android One(A reference phone) at cheaper than Motorola E prices. India already has 7% smartphones that is 85.9 Million smartphone owners(Looks Like A billion mobile users realistic)...to put that in perspective the USA has only 148.5 Million.

Tomi provides unnecessary commentary to this data. The http://communities-dominate.bl...

The ignorance of American people on the world is astonishing.

"There was a huge drop in Symbian marketshare 6 months before Elop came on as CEO. Causes cannot happen temporally before effects."

Yes, Symbian was an aging OS that needed replacement - and there was a replacement in the works, with a clear migration path, Meego. However, at Nokia, Symbian was still alive and well, albeit the writing was on the wall. Take a look at these three pictures:

http://communities-dominate.bl...
http://communities-dominate.bl...
http://communities-dominate.bl...

And the article in full, in case you're interested: http://communities-dominate.bl...

The data points are rather damning. Sales do not lie. Would Nokia have collapsed as much as it did, had it stuck with Meego or switched to Android? No. They might've lost a bit of market share, but it would have paid off quite handsomely, especially with Meego. It is quite clear that it's the choice of the WinPhone platform that is the culprit, here.

Why they choose WinPhone I do not know. They go from a clear upgrade path for their users to no upgrade path for their users, along with the infamous "Burning platforms" memo, and then expect their customers won't jump ship? Sorry, not happening.

It doesn't matter what you think - WinPhone will have a hell of a hard time to reach even double-digit market share. Right now it's flatlined. Everyone thinking otherwise are either: a) delusional, b) have a vested stake in seeing Windows Phone succeed, or c) has been fed with Snake Oil by their advisors.

What's really, really sad though, is that we've traded the IBM monopoly for the Windows monopoly, and now the Windows monopoly for the Android monopoly.

Yes, Android has passed iOS in both market- and mindshare - and there are no other viable competitors. Free software blew it - again! :(

"There was a huge drop in Symbian marketshare 6 months before Elop came on as CEO. Causes cannot happen temporally before effects."

Yes, Symbian was an aging OS that needed replacement - and there was a replacement in the works, with a clear migration path, Meego. However, at Nokia, Symbian was still alive and well, albeit the writing was on the wall. Take a look at these three pictures:

http://communities-dominate.bl...
http://communities-dominate.bl...
http://communities-dominate.bl...

And the article in full, in case you're interested: http://communities-dominate.bl...

The data points are rather damning. Sales do not lie. Would Nokia have collapsed as much as it did, had it stuck with Meego or switched to Android? No. They might've lost a bit of market share, but it would have paid off quite handsomely, especially with Meego. It is quite clear that it's the choice of the WinPhone platform that is the culprit, here.

Why they choose WinPhone I do not know. They go from a clear upgrade path for their users to no upgrade path for their users, along with the infamous "Burning platforms" memo, and then expect their customers won't jump ship? Sorry, not happening.

It doesn't matter what you think - WinPhone will have a hell of a hard time to reach even double-digit market share. Right now it's flatlined. Everyone thinking otherwise are either: a) delusional, b) have a vested stake in seeing Windows Phone succeed, or c) has been fed with Snake Oil by their advisors.

What's really, really sad though, is that we've traded the IBM monopoly for the Windows monopoly, and now the Windows monopoly for the Android monopoly.

Yes, Android has passed iOS in both market- and mindshare - and there are no other viable competitors. Free software blew it - again! :(

"There was a huge drop in Symbian marketshare 6 months before Elop came on as CEO. Causes cannot happen temporally before effects."

Yes, Symbian was an aging OS that needed replacement - and there was a replacement in the works, with a clear migration path, Meego. However, at Nokia, Symbian was still alive and well, albeit the writing was on the wall. Take a look at these three pictures:

http://communities-dominate.bl...
http://communities-dominate.bl...
http://communities-dominate.bl...

And the article in full, in case you're interested: http://communities-dominate.bl...

The data points are rather damning. Sales do not lie. Would Nokia have collapsed as much as it did, had it stuck with Meego or switched to Android? No. They might've lost a bit of market share, but it would have paid off quite handsomely, especially with Meego. It is quite clear that it's the choice of the WinPhone platform that is the culprit, here.

Why they choose WinPhone I do not know. They go from a clear upgrade path for their users to no upgrade path for their users, along with the infamous "Burning platforms" memo, and then expect their customers won't jump ship? Sorry, not happening.

It doesn't matter what you think - WinPhone will have a hell of a hard time to reach even double-digit market share. Right now it's flatlined. Everyone thinking otherwise are either: a) delusional, b) have a vested stake in seeing Windows Phone succeed, or c) has been fed with Snake Oil by their advisors.

What's really, really sad though, is that we've traded the IBM monopoly for the Windows monopoly, and now the Windows monopoly for the Android monopoly.

Yes, Android has passed iOS in both market- and mindshare - and there are no other viable competitors. Free software blew it - again! :(

"There was a huge drop in Symbian marketshare 6 months before Elop came on as CEO. Causes cannot happen temporally before effects."

Yes, Symbian was an aging OS that needed replacement - and there was a replacement in the works, with a clear migration path, Meego. However, at Nokia, Symbian was still alive and well, albeit the writing was on the wall. Take a look at these three pictures:

http://communities-dominate.bl...
http://communities-dominate.bl...
http://communities-dominate.bl...

And the article in full, in case you're interested: http://communities-dominate.bl...

The data points are rather damning. Sales do not lie. Would Nokia have collapsed as much as it did, had it stuck with Meego or switched to Android? No. They might've lost a bit of market share, but it would have paid off quite handsomely, especially with Meego. It is quite clear that it's the choice of the WinPhone platform that is the culprit, here.

Why they choose WinPhone I do not know. They go from a clear upgrade path for their users to no upgrade path for their users, along with the infamous "Burning platforms" memo, and then expect their customers won't jump ship? Sorry, not happening.

It doesn't matter what you think - WinPhone will have a hell of a hard time to reach even double-digit market share. Right now it's flatlined. Everyone thinking otherwise are either: a) delusional, b) have a vested stake in seeing Windows Phone succeed, or c) has been fed with Snake Oil by their advisors.

What's really, really sad though, is that we've traded the IBM monopoly for the Windows monopoly, and now the Windows monopoly for the Android monopoly.

Yes, Android has passed iOS in both market- and mindshare - and there are no other viable competitors. Free software blew it - again! :(

Go read all that Tomi Ahonen (former Nokia exec, consultant on mobile market) wrote about this fiasco. When you put all the pieces together, there is a very clear case of breach of fiduciary duty. It's either that, or the most insane case of business incompetence in the history of capitalism.

Because of the Carrier boycott.

Windows Phone will most probably never see double digit market share. The reason? Skype. Microsoft owns Skype, the single biggest threat to current carrier revenue. The Skype/VOIP revolution will happen, but if you were a carrier, would YOU invest in technology that would kill you off, long-term?

Tomi Ahonen has a rather complete rant about this topic from late 2012, and very little has changed since then.

Nokia had some issues but was still profitable as Tomi Ahonen clearly documents in this long post. tl;dr? A couple of short quotes and links to graphs:

This is how bad it was under previous CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo. Nokia had seen revenues decline from its peak in 2008. Nokia had seen profits decline severely from its peak also in 2008. Nokia had reported its first quarterly loss (although the full year was still profitable) - that loss was driven by Nokia's troubled Networking division, not its handsets units which were both highly profitable. ...

So to be clear, Nokia had reported one QUARTER of a loss, but in annual terms, Nokia was a profitable company. Its big revenue growth had turned into decline but that decline was actually halted around the time the Nokia Board decided to seek a replacement to Kallasvuo, and Nokia revenues had returned to growth by the time Elop joined Nokia.

Let me repeat. Nokia did NOT have a problem in its handsets business. Its issues were in its Networking business line.

Now the graphs:

Nokia profits by business line Note: Elop took over Sept. 21, 2010.

Which company had the strongest handset business?

Which company saw their handset business tank and when?

Smartphone marketshare

Nokia had some issues but was still profitable as Tomi Ahonen clearly documents in this long post. tl;dr? A couple of short quotes and links to graphs:

This is how bad it was under previous CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo. Nokia had seen revenues decline from its peak in 2008. Nokia had seen profits decline severely from its peak also in 2008. Nokia had reported its first quarterly loss (although the full year was still profitable) - that loss was driven by Nokia's troubled Networking division, not its handsets units which were both highly profitable. ...

So to be clear, Nokia had reported one QUARTER of a loss, but in annual terms, Nokia was a profitable company. Its big revenue growth had turned into decline but that decline was actually halted around the time the Nokia Board decided to seek a replacement to Kallasvuo, and Nokia revenues had returned to growth by the time Elop joined Nokia.

Let me repeat. Nokia did NOT have a problem in its handsets business. Its issues were in its Networking business line.

Now the graphs:

Nokia profits by business line Note: Elop took over Sept. 21, 2010.

Which company had the strongest handset business?

Which company saw their handset business tank and when?

Smartphone marketshare

Nokia had some issues but was still profitable as Tomi Ahonen clearly documents in this long post. tl;dr? A couple of short quotes and links to graphs:

This is how bad it was under previous CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo. Nokia had seen revenues decline from its peak in 2008. Nokia had seen profits decline severely from its peak also in 2008. Nokia had reported its first quarterly loss (although the full year was still profitable) - that loss was driven by Nokia's troubled Networking division, not its handsets units which were both highly profitable. ...

So to be clear, Nokia had reported one QUARTER of a loss, but in annual terms, Nokia was a profitable company. Its big revenue growth had turned into decline but that decline was actually halted around the time the Nokia Board decided to seek a replacement to Kallasvuo, and Nokia revenues had returned to growth by the time Elop joined Nokia.

Let me repeat. Nokia did NOT have a problem in its handsets business. Its issues were in its Networking business line.

Now the graphs:

Nokia profits by business line Note: Elop took over Sept. 21, 2010.

Which company had the strongest handset business?

Which company saw their handset business tank and when?

Smartphone marketshare

Nokia had some issues but was still profitable as Tomi Ahonen clearly documents in this long post. tl;dr? A couple of short quotes and links to graphs:

This is how bad it was under previous CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo. Nokia had seen revenues decline from its peak in 2008. Nokia had seen profits decline severely from its peak also in 2008. Nokia had reported its first quarterly loss (although the full year was still profitable) - that loss was driven by Nokia's troubled Networking division, not its handsets units which were both highly profitable. ...

So to be clear, Nokia had reported one QUARTER of a loss, but in annual terms, Nokia was a profitable company. Its big revenue growth had turned into decline but that decline was actually halted around the time the Nokia Board decided to seek a replacement to Kallasvuo, and Nokia revenues had returned to growth by the time Elop joined Nokia.

Let me repeat. Nokia did NOT have a problem in its handsets business. Its issues were in its Networking business line.

Now the graphs:

Nokia profits by business line Note: Elop took over Sept. 21, 2010.

Which company had the strongest handset business?

Which company saw their handset business tank and when?

Smartphone marketshare

Nokia had some issues but was still profitable as Tomi Ahonen clearly documents in this long post. tl;dr? A couple of short quotes and links to graphs:

This is how bad it was under previous CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo. Nokia had seen revenues decline from its peak in 2008. Nokia had seen profits decline severely from its peak also in 2008. Nokia had reported its first quarterly loss (although the full year was still profitable) - that loss was driven by Nokia's troubled Networking division, not its handsets units which were both highly profitable. ...

So to be clear, Nokia had reported one QUARTER of a loss, but in annual terms, Nokia was a profitable company. Its big revenue growth had turned into decline but that decline was actually halted around the time the Nokia Board decided to seek a replacement to Kallasvuo, and Nokia revenues had returned to growth by the time Elop joined Nokia.

Let me repeat. Nokia did NOT have a problem in its handsets business. Its issues were in its Networking business line.

Now the graphs:

Nokia profits by business line Note: Elop took over Sept. 21, 2010.

Which company had the strongest handset business?

Which company saw their handset business tank and when?

Smartphone marketshare