Slashdot Mirror

I truly believe that even though I am atheist that there are a handful of companies that are truly evil. That they are run by those that take sick delight in causing real suffering and misery upon their fellow human beings, your Goldman Sachs, your Halliburton, your Monsanto, companies that if they could increase their profits 15% by throwing live babies in a meat grinder they would. I don't see how anyone can not believe in real evil when seeing these pigs living like kings off of the misery and suffering they have caused with zero remorse. Hell if I walked into any of those companies and saw actual demons in three piece suits going to meetings like Wolfram & hart frankly I wouldn't even be surprised, these companies do nothing but profit from suffering.

But you seem to forget we had the draft for ages and the rich simply either went to college or some reserve unit in some cushy location like Dubya in Alabama. The 1% may cause the misery but they aren't about to let their delicate selves get dirty like the peasants. look how many chickenhawks are pushing for a war with Iran, notice how none of their kids are in harm's way?

Sadly it WILL change, but only after you see the rich fleeing the country like the fall of Saigon after the whole thing falls apart. Even an 8th grader with 2 economics classes can see the situation is simply unsustainable, you have nearly half a billion people and all the factories were sent overseas. As Huckabee pointed out even our military can't function anymore without CCC (Cheapo Chinese Crap) and we make less tech now than we did in 1975! if you have a strong stomach you might want to look at these numbers and realize that they are over 2 years old and the downward trends they are listing have accelerated since that time. How anyone can believe that there is any other path in our future but an Arab Spring is beyond me, because the poor simply aren't gonna go crawl off into a corner and slowly starve like they did in the depression. Things are gonna get ugly, I believe after the student loan bubble bursts followed by the stock market bubble you'll see US money become practically worthless and at that time their little red VS blue distractions simply won't placate the masses anymore. If the conspiracy theorists are right they are building "FEMA camps" for just this eventuality, some nice out of the way concentration camps to put the teeming masses. But nobody is gonna put up with camps thanks to the Germans so when that happens will be when the shooting starts.

Even God wants you to fail.

Another thought; since this was a put together deal by a bunch of investors to sell off at a later date, (or so it seems) it reminds me of the late 90's when groups of "investors" were buying up mom and pop dial up ISP's bundled them under the same name then selling them off, they had no intention of doing anything for the customer, the individual accounts were just a body count.
Lightsquared seems like a similar deal:
"The legal team now includes Theodore Olson, who helped George W. Bush secure the presidential election win in 2000"
http://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/03/14/lightsquared-gathers-lawyers-goes-to-war/

Ole Teddy seems like a guy that should be sent to prison for a rectal refit considering the Bush presidency was one of the single worst things to ever happen to this country.

Republicans urge FCC to allow Lightsquared: Really why? Would this have to do with their having insider knowledge and profiting from it?
http://thehill.com/blogs/hillicon-valley/technology/216273-republican-urges-fcc-to-approve-lightsquared

Congress insider trading:
http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-11-14/politics/30396448_1_stock-market-market-moving-information-trades

Scumbags...

Puh: that's nothing. HMS Victory was launched in 1765, and is still in commission. She's even older than the United States!

If the UK doesn't reverse course on defense cuts, there may not be much more than HMS Victory left to protect the British Isles, and the only waves Britsh sailors will be familiar with are these.

Cuts to the Royal Navy
British defence cuts will help make ADF shipshape
Navy chief: Britain cannot keep up its role in Libya air war due to cuts
Big British defense cuts weaken Pentagon's top military partner
Defense Cuts Mean UK Would Lose A New Falklands War, Veteran Claims

...the sort of fiction we have come to expect from Apple

i.e. you have no counter argument. If there's any delusion, it's yours. The point about most Android owners not wanting to buy another in future is fact. Thus "continue to get what they want" will be bad news for Android. http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-08-01/tech/29974966_1_android-iphone-owners-gene-munster

Your article is based on a semi-formal survey of 217 smartphone users in Minneapolis.

This article:

http://allthingsd.com/20111212/youth-is-wasted-on-the-young-and-so-are-consumer-electronics/

is based on a proper, randomized survey of 2000 households nationwide. The numbers of "loyal" users for Apple (83%) and Android (81%) are statically the same, because they're within the margin of error of the study, and both are very high.

To put it another way, your cite is crap. Both Apple and Android users are very happy with their devices. Personally, I've had both, and really enjoyed both. When I switched from an iPhone 4 to a Nexus S (because for Google employees there are a number of useful internal apps which are Android-only, and because I was going to be doing some work on Android-related stuff) I did it with some trepidation. I really liked my iPhone and I was afraid the Android phone was going to be a step down, since I'd always heard it was much less polished. Within a week I was very glad I'd made the switch.

I didn't find Android 2.2.3 to be significantly less polished than iOS, in fact in many areas I found it to be more usable. For example, I liked the Android home screens better than the Apple approach, and I was very pleased to note that when listening to an audio book or music and using the navigation app, the book/music were automatically paused whenever the navigation app gave directions, and then automatically resumed. A trivial issue, but one that had annoyed me for quite some time with my iPhone.

And all of that was before I started digging into how I could tweak the behavior of the system to fit my preferences. When I started doing that, there was just no comparison, Android was so much more flexible -- and that's even without rooting (I have the phone connected to my corporate e-mail, so security policy disallows rooting or modified ROMs). So for me, Android is clearly better, and the upgrades to Android 4 and iOS 5 have widened the gap.

That said, when I pick up my old iPhone (my wife has it now), I still find it quite nice to use. Both systems are, IMO, very usable and very powerful. I give the edge to Android, but I know others (including Google employees) who prefer iOS. It's a matter of taste, and the divide isn't even as large as Windows vs OS X, or either of those versus any flavor of Linux.

By that logic the iDevices are just more choice. What would you suggest we do? Take them off the market?

I'm not suggesting anything. I just like to correct the blanket statement that consumers like choice, or choice is good.

Believe whatever you need to feel better about your own choice. Its your delusion. Normal people will continue getting what they want and ignoring the platform zealots like yourself.

i.e. you have no counter argument. If there's any delusion, it's yours. The point about most Android owners not wanting to buy another in future is fact. Thus "continue to get what they want" will be bad news for Android.
http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-08-01/tech/29974966_1_android-iphone-owners-gene-munster

you state that as though it's common knowledge he's running around with his pants on his head. Please give us more to go on.

Sorry I was a bit busy at the time to look for relevant links.

Mitt Romney: Another Crazy Republican Gear

The 'Crazy', 'Extremist' Republican Party Is About To Nominate a Massachusetts Moderate

Are the Republican candidates all crazy?

My favorite quote from that article:

A leading Republican, who was in Congress for more than 10 years, answered my question: "Who can beat Obama?" with a casual, "a mammal". Then he added sadly: "But they are all reptiles."

You could spend a lot of your evening looking at all the crazy Republicans. Normally I don't like to lump by party, but this year there's clearly something in the Republicans' water glasses at the debates.

But Jobs was not a universally popular figure. He oozed arrogance, was vicious about business rivals, and in contrast to, say, Bill Gates, refused to have any truck with notions of corporate responsibility. He habitually parked his Mercedes in the disabled parking slot at Apple headquarters and one of his first acts on returning to the company in 1997 was to terminate all of its corporate philanthropy programmes. Jobs's management style owed less to Zen Buddhism than to George Orwell. No aspect of corporate life was immune from his authority and he was almost pathologically controlling when it came to dealing with the press.

The 2009 attempt to raise funds by devaluing its already pathetic currency revealed not only the country's fiscal desperation, but also the abuse Dear Leader was willing to inflict on his people. The won was devalued by 100 percent, which meant 1,000 won suddenly had the purchasing power of 10 won.

It appears they got the 100 to 1 ratio correct but I don't see how this is a "devaluation by 100 percent." Such ambiguous language would normally lead me to believe that a devaluation by 100 percent means everything is completely worthless (with zero percent value left). Wouldn't the correct devaluation percentage be 99 percent? I guess I would have preferred the fraction or ratio comparison instead if that is indeed how listing devaluation by percentage works in economics. Perhaps they could use better phrasing like "reduced purchasing power of all your money to one hundredth of its original worth overnight." Furthermore, how would you not riot over your government doing something like that to you?

To be honest, the amount of good Bill Gates has done for the world is quite remarkable. Since 2007 he has given away $28 billion, saving 6 million lives. That's $2 billion more than US budget for foreign aid. Say what you want about Gates or Microsoft, but he really has helped the world with the money he made.

I had a Pre. Wonderful software, absolutely dreadful hardware.

Thing couldn't get a GPS lock to save its life, indoors, outdoors, wherever.

Battery (with normal use, with GPS turned off, WiFi off, and push off) lasted roughly 12 hours. If it couldn't find a 3G signal, it would cycle between radios constantly, killing the battery even faster. I had to carry a spare battery around.

The keyboard was an extra tiny portrait style. Why?!!!!!!! Who has fingers small enough to use that thing?

The edge of the keyboard slider was sharp enough to slice cheese.

The Touchstone never worked, as the magnets weren't strong enough to keep it from sliding off over time.

Sometimes, opening the keyboard would make the battery fall out.

Did no one test these before they went out?

In the world of Windows Metro, the app tile replaces the splash screen.

SOPA sponsor Lamar Smith, under the guise of protecting childred from online pornographers, has proposed a new bill that requires every Internet Service Provider to spy on every customer, logging every thing that they do online and keeping records for an entire year. Just in case. So... yeah. It's getting pretty bad.

And of course these records would be discoverable by his Big Media sponsors.

Apple deserves and gets the most blame because they are the ones with most margins to spare and the most cash in the bank (~100 billion).

Except Apple is getting all of the blame, not just "most". Microsoft also has a gigantic pile of cash, yet you don't see anyone holding their feet to the fire over the XBox 360 and all the suicides at that Foxconn plant.

Which is why this is just an excuse to break out the Apple Hatorade.

The theoretical/empirical distinction you draw above is nonsense. If something is theft, and we claim that we cannot show results of it, that does not change its status as theft. Furthermore, the empirical data you posted do not take into account most of the factors we must analyze here.

The movie industry as a whole is doing quite well thanks to its blockbusters; however, that does not measure the impact on independent films or smaller filmmakers. In fact, it measures the industry as a whole and does not tell us (a) if they would be doing better without piracy and (b) what individual parts of the industry are doing. Some might point to a consolidation of power in the industry around "blockbuster" films as a negative consequence of piracy.

Finally, you have only measured one industry out of several. I found this article on the music industry to be enlightening:

http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-02-18/tech/30052663_1_riaa-music-industry-cd-era

We should also look at software and book publishing as they are also affected.

I've never seen a Catholic wearing a tinfoil hat. Can you provide evidence for this claim?

Whoa! Really? Never seen the pope? Why do you think that friggin' hat is so big, anyway? Yep, totally lined with tin-foil.

Nope, that's gold.

The next few years are going to be really fun to watch as companies fight over this new market. I think it's inevitable that phones and tablets will become the primary computing devices for most users in a matter of years, because they let people do the things that they use PCs for--Facebook, YouTube, email--without the hassle of PC maintenance. Tablets are already outselling the desktop PC market. Some people don't like "appliance computing", but having grown up with handheld consoles, I see appliance computing as a natural evolution and something to look forward to. PCs will still be around for those who need them.

Back in the day home users had home computers (simple appliances), while "real" computers were expensive complicated contraptions used at businesses (mini-computers, workstations). Early IBM-PCs (for all the crappy specs) were positioned above home computers in price. Eventually the home computer market got absorbed into the PC/Mac market, which also absorbed in a lot of the higher end market (server, supercomputer). People are using complex computers for their simple home user needs!

Home users would typically be best served by home computers, while workstation-esq PCs will still be a mainstay in businesses, and also in homes (but you might have 1 PC in a house of 5 people.) As it is the refresh cycle is longer in PCs than it used to be (mine is currently 4.5 years old with no plans to replace).

I can see the attraction to tablet/smart phone form factors. Years ago I got a palm pilot. It can crudly play music, and you can keep notes on it, but that's about it. Plus you get to look dorky using it.

After years of not getting a smartphone I finally got an iPod Touch. A lot of the benefit of a smart phone without the contract. It's almost what I'd hope the palm pilot would be.

I've never seen a Catholic wearing a tinfoil hat. Can you provide evidence for this claim?

Whoa! Really? Never seen the pope? Why do you think that friggin' hat is so big, anyway? Yep, totally lined with tin-foil.

It looks the same? Then surely it will be as big a "disappointment" as the iPhone 4S was according to analysts--which went on to sell 37 million last quarter. In all seriousness, while the so-called Retina Display is the thing I'm most looking forward to (especially for reading text), the most interesting rumor is that the iPad 2 will continue to be sold at $200 to compete with the Kindle Fire. While the iPad is still the most dominant tablet, the Kindle Fire had a decent run over the holidays. By selling the iPad 2 at a cheaper price alongside the iPad 3, Apple will have both the high end and low end covered. This is the same strategy they're using with the iPhone 3GS (in fact, it's often free with contract), which helped Apple close the gap with Android's marketshare in December.

The next few years are going to be really fun to watch as companies fight over this new market. I think it's inevitable that phones and tablets will become the primary computing devices for most users in a matter of years, because they let people do the things that they use PCs for--Facebook, YouTube, email--without the hassle of PC maintenance. Tablets are already outselling the desktop PC market. Some people don't like "appliance computing", but having grown up with handheld consoles, I see appliance computing as a natural evolution and something to look forward to. PCs will still be around for those who need them.

So your answer is to just let the corps do what they want without even having to bother with the bribes? you DO realize that with a jug of milk at $4 the corps are pushing the conservatives to do away with the minimum wage even though thanks to the feds rampant inflation of the money what they are being paid now is worth less than it was in 1963? Or look at what happened with the banks after Glass Stegall ended, banks now treat Wall street like Las Vegas with nicer outfits.

I'd say the ONLY thing we agree on is a smaller fed because i want that power back in the hands of the states so that We, The People can have control again. But we don't need less regulation we need more regulation and the ones we have now strictly enforced. We also need to replace "free" trade which is anything but with China manipulating its currency and replace it with fair trade, and we need to punish corps that have sent 42,400 factories overseas since 2001. here are a few more facts for you, here is the source and please remember that as with glass Stegall in the past 20 years the government has been gutting regulations left and right so by your accounts it should be great here since the businesses are free to do as they will, instead we have:

1.-43.6 Americans living in poverty, the highest number in the entire 51 years of record keeping, 2.-4 million more join them a year. 3.-In 2000 11 percent were living in poverty, by 2009 that had jumped to 14 percent. 3.- The US poverty rate is now the third worse on the entire planet 4.-More than 50 million are now without health insurance, so they will be going to our ERs and dragging down the system. 5.-Now there are more than 40 million Americans on food stamps and these numbers are two years old, its even worse now. 6.-And for something closer to us geeks manufacturing in the computer industry, our tech that is supposed to save us, is now actually lower than it was in 1975.

Look at the numbers for yourself. Since Reagan we've had one corporate ass kissing POTUS after another and while the regulations have either disappeared or are simply not enforced the businesses haven't used that to become "job creators" unless you count jobs in Bangalore and Beijing. Hell the "job czar" that Nobama hired not only didn't pay any taxes with his megacorp he actually got 1.2 billion in rebates back only to use that money to close one of the last factories they had in the USA and send it to India. he even had the gall to brag "These aren't the low skill low wages jobs i'm sending, these are the good high wage jobs. We're doing this because India is where the money is and we want the jobs to be where there are customers". We Mr Prick CEO maybe if you and your friends hadn't systematically gutted our manufacturing base over the past 30 years we might actually HAVE money to buy your products, ever think of that?

No my friend we need to drop the hammer on these corps and when they offshore throw their CEOs and their families out with it, let them live in China and breathe through a mask. After all its good enough for their employees right?

You're incorrect about the app having a different name. Apple bought Siri in 2010. The app, called Siri, continued to be available in Apple's app store even after the company was purchased. It was removed from the store when the iPhone 4S was released.

FB CPM is 22 cents:
http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-q4-2011-ad-revenues-2012-1

It grew 8% from last quarter though; if they keep that growth up for the next five years they can hit $1 CPM.

Hmm....

http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-07-14/wall_street/29986954_1_osi-systems-scanners-shares

Perhaps other aspects of their service-mindedness need looking into also?

No, not really. It's almost ready, the native client that is. But until then, no corporate mail support in the Playbook. You have to tether a Blackberry phone to it. Don't have a Blackberry? Too bad. Battery on your phone dead? Too bad.

Like I said, I would wait for them to ship an email client first. Even HP shipped one for their tablet.

Even more so, the rate of suicides at Foxconn is actually LOWER than the average suicide rate among Americans workers! Amazing.

http://articles.businessinsider.com/2010-05-26/tech/30097107_1_suicide-rate-foxconn-suicide-prevention

Communism, as practiced in the USSR, was essentially a religion in its own right - without personified God, but with dogmas and prophets and heresies and hate.

When you use a functional definition of religion this is true, but this functional definition is tricky, because many social phenomena within highly secular countries are considered to be "religious" too, some even proven by MRI
For this reason these functional definition are often abused for rhetorical tricks: If X is consired to be bad, some people will use a functional defintion of religion to show that X is a religion, if Y is consired to be good, then people will use a different definition of religion to show that Y is not a religion, because if they would continue to use the same functional defintion of religion, they used to show that X is a religion, Y would also be consired to be a religion.

Without tricks like this people are unable to keep stupid dogmas like "religion possions everything" because it is pretty easy to see, that while religions are often a force for bad, they are also often a force for good. Or as Freeman Dyson phrased it: "And for bad people to do good things—that [also] takes religion."

While you make some good points, please explain why then over the last three or four decades, the US GDP has doubled or tripled but real wages have stayed about the same for most people...
http://www.capitalismhitsthefan.com/

So, there are other political forces at work...
http://www.businessinsider.com/do-low-tax-rates-on-rich-people-ruin-the-economy-2011-7

Firstly, it breaks the fundamental incentive underlying our entire economy: you have to produce value to earn money before you can enjoy value produced by other people when you spend that money.

I have two problems with this line of reasoning (not mocking yo, sorry if it sounds that way).

First, as I said before, old ways of thinking don't necessarily apply to the new digital world, where distribution and/or manufacturing costs can be 0, or negligible.

Secondly, Our society does not necessarily reward producing value with money. lottery winners, heirs, people on welfare etc. Having money by no means you have produced or contributed something useful.

Secondly, we have only someone's word for it that they would never really have paid for something even if there was no other way to enjoy it. I find that claim preposterous in many cases.

Well, that's much harder to prove. I know that a lot of the movies I downloaded there is no way in hell I would have paid for. I got them because I was curious or simply wanted to pass the time. I I couldn't download then I would do something else. There is simply no way in hell a lot of the stuff I choose to waste my time with is even worth renting for $1 from redbox. Likewise with some games I play, I have absolutely zero interest on playing online. When a game is $70 with a focus on multiplayer and I only want to play the single player campaign that is about 5 hours long, there is no chance I will ever pay for that. If they offered the campaign separately then I would.

If piracy is decriminalised, then surely there is no such thing as piracy any more by definition, so I don't know what you mean here.

It isn't that simple. If Switzerland decriminalized piracy that doesn't mean corporations in the US don't consider it piracy. You can still infringe copyright without permission from the copyright holder, even if you can't be held accountable for doing so.

You've made similar claims several times in this discussion. There are more than 150 members of the World Trade Organisation, including pretty much the entire developed world, and under TRIPS all of those have basic minimum standards for things like legal copyright protections. There are only 200 or so countries in the world. So where is it that you claim piracy is legal, and how do their creative and consumption economies look compared to places like the US and Europe?

It's It's legal in Switzerland

It's It's legal in Canada

It's It's legal in The Netherlands

Their creative and consumption economies are not impacted by piracy, as that was often the reason to make it legal in the first place.

The trouble is, as any researcher can tell you, what people say and what they do are frequently different things, whether intentionally or otherwise.

Oh, sure. Except we have overwhelming evidence that people will still pay for stuff when it is offered for free. Look at the various games or CDs released for free or without any DRM, people still pay for it. They have a choice not to and still chose to do so, to the point that the content creator can make a nice profit.

The only way to know for sure what people consider worth paying for is to give them no choice but to pay for it if they want it and see who pays. That will tell you, by definition, who really thinks it's worth the asking price.

Done and done.

They're only making those millions because of all the people who actually pay to see the movie or play the game. The pir

You link to an article that explains that in one particular region of the Sahara the localised effects of climate change may have caused more rain, and hence desert greening. This does not mean that the same thing will occur everywhere in the world. In fact, desertification is increasing. Consider some other recent evidence:

climate change is making desertification "the greatest environmental challenge of our times"
Australia suffers worst drought in 1,000 years
THE GREAT DROUGHT OF 2011 Is America's Worst Since The Dust Bowl
Africa drought pushes Kenya and Somalia into pre-famine conditions

Predicting the world's overall changes in food production in response to elevated CO2 is virtually impossible. Global production is expected to rise until the increase in local average temperatures exceeds 3C, but then start to fall. In tropical and dry regions increases of just 1 to 2C are expected to lead to falls in production. In marginal lands where water is the greatest constraint, which includes much of the developing world but also regions such as the western US, the losses may greatly exceed the gains. Climate myths: Higher CO2 levels will boost plant growth and food production

Vote for Ron Paul. Register Republican so you can vote for him in the primaries. You can unregister afterward if you want.

Ron Paul: Tells The Dangers Of SOPA And PIPA

Ron Paul on SOPA: They Want to Take Over the Internet!

Why's The Media Shafting Ron Paul, And Ignoring NDAA & SOPA Dangers?

Or just DuckDuckGo "Ron Paul SOPA" to get many, many more examples.

Yup Bush was an idiot. Yup Obama is keeping the same pro-wall street, spend happy policies of Bush. There is not much difference between the spending habits of rank and file Dems and Reps, except for a few drastic differences like Ron Paul. The two parties may want to spend on different things, but they really don't want to cut.

While the Tea Party did start last election cycle with Paul, it's been hijacked by various people trying to lead a grassroots headless organization. Some are bad and get attention in the worse ways. No different than the various occupy movements not having a specific leader.

But the core belief of a small gov that follows the constitution is valid. Yes Bush was a complete and utter idiot sockpuppet. How he was elected twice baffles me. But Obama really blew his hope and change. Senator O was against warrantless wiretaps, was against the Feds being involved with state legal rights for medical marihuana, was going to close Gitmo, was against the war in Iraq, was going to close redundancies in the government. 4 years later he's broken all of those promises. Yes we're out of Iraq, but it was at Bush's timetable and not any sooner. Oh and the money trail hasn't changed, Obama is still in bed with the same big business/big bank people Bush was. Obama's DOJ has even given up on prosecuting anyone responsible for the wall street disasters. Hell even his Obama care was all pro-big business. If it was a mandated government program that's one thing, mandating private companies for health care, and then limiting new hospitals for competition is obvious lobbying by the existing health care insurance system.

So if you're happy with Obama being basically a 3rd term of Bush and want one more, then vote Dem or any of the other Rep candidates. Want a chance for something different, go with Ron Paul

And you have whole families, school children, living in homeless shelters.

The ones in shelters are lucky. I don't know numbers, but a great deal of our homeless don't even have that because their local governments either don't see it as a priority or don't have the means to provide homeless shelters. That is why tent cities have sprung up in many parts of the country.

http://www.businessinsider.com/lakewood-new-jersey-homeless-tent-city-2011-9?op=1

The market seems to disagree with you.

Well I'd say this BS is just part of the greater lie which is "education will fix the economy" like you can take millions of 104 IQ workers, wave a magical education wand, and BAM! Suddenly they are all engineers. In the end we have to face the fact that we have millions of low skilled workers and no low skilled jobs that can actually feed and house a person in the USA, much less a family like in the days of the factory. Did you know we lost 42,400 factories since 2001? That's NOT a typo folks, that's millions of your fellow Americans that most likely will never work at anywhere close to that pay again and will frankly be lucky, depending on where they are, not to end up in a tent.

We are just gonna have to face the fact we can't educate our way out of losses like that, nor can tax breaks to so called "job creators' make up for anywhere near those kinds of numbers. what do we do with all these people? put them in camps? I'd argue the only reason we didn't have our own Arab spring is the dems throwing benefits at the unemployed but we simply can't keep that up without rampant inflation.

I have a feeling though as it wears on we'll see more total horseshit ideas like this simply because politicians don't want to bite the bullet and face the facts that our years of giving tax breaks for offshoring and running the whole country on credit has run us into the ground and there is NO way to get out that isn't gonna hurt everybody, 1% and 99% alike.

Android seems like it followed the .com startup model: get marketshare, then try to make money somehow*. Well, now they have marketshare and all that "open" stuff they did to get it has come back like herpes. So now they're trying to gain some control back, stuff like "using compatibility as a club to make them do what we want". Requiring the default theme be included or a style guide seem pretty innocuous (and a rather good idea for everyone except the carriers but they have terrible judgement).

* Side note: If your answer is licensing the android app store and advertising, keep in mind that 2/3 of their mobile revenue came from iOS ads.

John Gruber asked an interesting question in response to this: Has any single PC vendor ever controlled that much of the Windows market? It's going to be very interesting to see how Android vendors respond to Google entering the handset market. It can't be good for the platform to have vendors forking the operating system just to snipe at each other. It's already fragmented enough with TouchWiz and all the other junkware, and popular phones that are months old don't even get major updates. This kind of unregulated chaos is exactly what so many critics predicted; it may even be an opportunity for Microsoft to win some Windows Phone deals as carriers decide they don't want to run a competing vendor's operating system. Whatever happens this year, I'm sure iPhone users will grab the popcorn and enjoy the show.

the only product Apple arguably could have been accused of having a monopoly on was portable music players, where there were plenty of competitors in the market.

Of course - with Apple there is no monopoly at 70%+ of a market, but if Google gets 65% of a market, then it has a monopoly!

Google search U.S. market share: 65.6% Nov 2011 [bloomberg.com]
Google search global market share: 69.7% q2 2010
iPad U.S. tablet market share: 82% May 2011
iTunes U.S. digital music market share: 66.2% q3 2010
iPod U.S. mp3 player market share: 76% July 2010

you can't even suggest that Google has a monopoly on web search around here without getting pounded with downmods.

monopoly
The exclusive possession or control of the supply or trade in a commodity or service.
The exclusive possession, control, or exercise of something: "men don't have a monopoly on unrequited love".

Google has lower market share in search than many Apple products do in their respective categories (figures latest I can find for each product):

Google search U.S. market share: 65.6% Nov 2011
Google search global market share: 69.7% q2 2010
iPad U.S. tablet market share: 82% May 2011
iTunes U.S. digital music market share: 66.2% q3 2010
iPod U.S. mp3 player market share: 76% July 2010

It seems to me that Google does not have a monopoly in search; it would be a funny monopoly that had 30% to 35% of the market controlled by its competitors. But if you insist that they do, then you should also say that Apple has various monopolies in its respective markets, and should similarly be subject to anti-trust scrutiny.

http://www.businessinsider.com/android-activations-2011-12

"The other mobile OS makers need to make the same sort of change or they fear annoying what users they have left."

Boggle.

You assume that our government is adequately maintaining the roads. That's not only not obvious to me, but our Glorious President did, back in 2009, pretend to make a huge push for public works projects.

No real discussion of why these projects weren't being done before. Seems like we fail to keep the roads up, unless they are near something important.

Are you for real? And who modded you up and me down? Google is absolutely a monopoly in web search. It doesn't matter if I'm the "only one pushing it" on Slashdot (which isn't true).

A monopoly means more than just "has a lot of market share". Try reading up on it before you start throwing it around.

Monopoly means "the exclusive possession or control of the supply or trade in a commodity or service." Google is the dominant search engine as well as the dominant web advertiser. It is most definitely a monopoly. But if you and the moderators don't believe me, how about the words of Eric Schmidt, who said in response to the question of whether Google is in a position that would subject it to monopoly rules: "We're in that area."

They're a monopoly.

Google has only 65% of the market share. That hardly sounds like a monopoly. Sure, they are the dominant player, but there are alternatives and switching to a different search provider has little friction, it's not like changing operating systems.

In comparison, Microsoft owns 80 - 90% of the operating system market (based on web client statistics)

Are you for real? And who modded you up and me down? Google is absolutely a monopoly in web search. It doesn't matter if I'm the "only one pushing it" on Slashdot (which isn't true).

A monopoly means more than just "has a lot of market share". Try reading up on it before you start throwing it around.

Monopoly means "the exclusive possession or control of the supply or trade in a commodity or service." Google is the dominant search engine as well as the dominant web advertiser. It is most definitely a monopoly. But if you and the moderators don't believe me, how about the words of Eric Schmidt, who said in response to the question of whether Google is in a position that would subject it to monopoly rules: "We're in that area."

They're a monopoly.

Here is how: http://www.businessinsider.com/language-of-ndaa-legal-to-imprison-americans-2012-1
Section 1021 of the NDAA allows the U.S. military to indefinitely detain, without due process, any person engaged in "hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners ... without trial until the end of hostilities."
Section 1022 expressly states that the military will imprison anyone who is a member of al-Qaeda or "an associated force" that acts like al-Qaeda; and anyone who planned or carried out an attack, or attempted attack, against the U.S.
Section 1022 continues that detaining American citizens is not required. "UNITED STATES CITIZENS — The requirement to detain a person in military custody under this section does not extend to citizens of the United States."
The bottom line is the government can imprison anyone suspected of or even associated with terrorism. This power is open to wide interpretation and could certainly be abused.

Is there any point in posting an unsubstantiated rumour by someone who has previously claimed that the deal was happening back in May and that Nokia's phone division would be sold by the end of 2011? Nokia is predominantly a phone maker, and I really can't see them wanting to sell the main business of their company to anyone. What would be left of the company?

And would Microsoft really want to spend the claimed $19 billion on a division that has yet to prove that anybody wants to buy one of their Windows phones? And Nokia have the connections with the carriers that is required to get the phones into the retail system. Given the way Windows phones haven't really been pushed by the carriers, I would think that they need the sales team at Nokia. Buying the patents and manufacturing plants only solves part of the problem - and that assumes that there is a problem in the first place that requires the purchase.

Finally, I don't think the other phone companies like HTC, LG, and Samsung would feel happy about Microsoft moving into their territory. This sale would only cause friction with those companies, is an expensive risk, and provides no benefit considering that Nokia are already committed to selling Microsoft's platform now.

Is there any point in posting an unsubstantiated rumour by someone who has previously claimed that the deal was happening back in May and that Nokia's phone division would be sold by the end of 2011? Nokia is predominantly a phone maker, and I really can't see them wanting to sell the main business of their company to anyone. What would be left of the company?

And would Microsoft really want to spend the claimed $19 billion on a division that has yet to prove that anybody wants to buy one of their Windows phones? And Nokia have the connections with the carriers that is required to get the phones into the retail system. Given the way Windows phones haven't really been pushed by the carriers, I would think that they need the sales team at Nokia. Buying the patents and manufacturing plants only solves part of the problem - and that assumes that there is a problem in the first place that requires the purchase.

Finally, I don't think the other phone companies like HTC, LG, and Samsung would feel happy about Microsoft moving into their territory. This sale would only cause friction with those companies, is an expensive risk, and provides no benefit considering that Nokia are already committed to selling Microsoft's platform now.

The only thing that matters is the number of delegates the canidates won. Romney, Santorum and Paul each won 7 delegates. Gingrich and Perry each won 2 delegates.

Actually that's completey wrong. None of them got any delegates from Iowa. The Iowa Caucus doesn't assign national delegates, it elects local delegates which go on to the county meeting where state delegates are elected. Those state delegates then meet to elect national delegates. After all of that, then those national delgates go to the convention to vote. Iowa is actually one of the very last states to choose delegates. And they are not bound by the vote of the caucus.

The caucus numbers are for show and are not even used to decide the 1st set of local delegates. That's a separate vote made after people have chosen their favorite candidate. Some sources say Ron Paul is the real winner in terms of delegates because they had people sticking around volunteering to be delegates.

Pandora works just fine, get a clue.

Hulu worked until they purposefully made their site not work. There is, however, a work-around so you're wrong there as well.

Netflix, well, you got me there!

Still, the Playbook will access many many more video sites today than the Fire ever will. Let's not forget about the numerous other advantages the PB has over fire, the iPad, and other tablets.

Heh, given a choice between the Fire and a Playbook, only a total moron would choose the Fire.

Android people tend to hate it when the iPod Touch or iPad are brought up and conflated with the iPhone (even though Apple people tend to view iPhone + iPad + iPod Touch as a single platform).

I'm not sure I'm an "Android person," but the reason I dislike it when it's brought up is because it doesn't matter all that much and it's more of a distraction.

Take Q3 2011 as an example. According to Gartner, there were 60 million Android phones shipped and 17 million iPhones shipped. "But this doesn't include iPod touches and iPads!" you shriek. Fair enough--let's include them.

According to Apple, they shipped 11 million iPads and 6.62 million iPods. Now let's assume, just for laughs, that all of those were iPod touches. That's right, Apple didn't sell a single iPod shuffle or iPod nano. That ups Apple's iOS sales to 35 million--more than double the iPhone reference. But it's still a little more than half the Android phone sales. And that's making a pretty big assumption about iPod touch sales.

Let's try to figure out Android tablet sales. According to IDC, Apple had about 61% of the market with 11 million iPads. Android had about 32%. Doing a little math, that means about 6 million Android tablets. So we have 66 million Android phone and tablet sales versus 28 million iPhone & iPad sales.

That's what I mean by a "distraction." They just use this to try to discredit the original report.

The fact that it has the world's largest collection of artillery pointed at Seoul, and important economic center of Asia notwithstanding. I suspect North Korea could do almost as much damage economically (and certainly kill millions more) than Iran. But as soon as they tested a nuclear weapon, we stopped the sabre-rattling. Maybe that's why the Iranians want one so badly -- to make us go away.