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So American Airports/Airlines have to pay rent on the land? Pay for their security services (Homeland Security)? Put money aside for future improvements? Pay the full cost of traffic control?
Couple of articles comparing Canada vs the US, Google has lots more.
http://business.financialpost....
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

Uber drivers *can* pickup street fares, but you still have to request and pay through the app.

You too may need to do some research.

“Our technology platform is used to connect riders and drivers through our lead generation software. Any solicitation independent from the app is strictly prohibited. We communicate this to all driver partners,” said Uber spokesman Taylor Bennett.

Moreover, Uber’s insurance policy applies only to rides that are digitally booked, raising liability and public safety issues.

When a ride is requested by a person picked up before the request is put in it may not go to the same driver. Another car may be dispatched to that location.

There is also no non-compete clause (because they are contractors) so they can work for Lyft and Sidecar at the same time.

The US Courts are hearing cases on whether drivers are employees or contractors.

I guess I was wrong about not working for multiple companies. Though that may change with the rulings about being an employee.

By the way, if you investigated so thoroughly then why no references?

Of course the oil is going to get to market. People are deluded if they think this is going to stop the oil sands.

CALGARY Shipments of oil by rail from Western Canada are expected to more than triple in the next two years, as the sector heads into a severe shortage of pipeline capacity by next year, according to a new forecast by the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers.

http://business.financialpost....

At the right price point (admittedly not right now) even trucks may become economical. I'm betting they would find a way to ship it by carrier pigeon before they would leave it in the ground. Makes no difference to me so long as there is no shortage.

See: http://business.financialpost....

Oil producers are increasing output. Oil would need to drop have to get down to $30-$35 and stay there for for six months before they start shutting things down.

I think the reason he gave you the link in google was to help you get past the paywall. Getting a google.com referrer is usually enough for them to give you a free view.

If you want an analysis of the latest IPCC report, you can look here (of course, if you want something technical you can read the actual report).

If you want to see an actual survey of climatologists, and not the 97% report based on dubious questions, you can look here.

The problem with that survey that reported 97% is that the questions were very narrow......so that even skeptical scientists would naturally answer 'yes' to them.

Never fear - Samsung is still seriously considering buying BlackBerry: http://business.financialpost....

Why would I listen to someone who just believes?

http://business.financialpost....

Polar bar populations are thriving. It is the best conservation success story.
From 5000 in the 60's to 25000 in 2013-14.

Read Susan Crockfords article. It shows clearly that the scientists tasked to monitoring polar bear populations are more interested in keeping their jobs than showing the truth.

Its important that we freeze in winter because energy costs are going up, you idiot. Not because it has anything to do with climate.

Your problem and the AGW crowds problem is fighting a "currently" non-issue, due to faked data and faulty science, and that fight is causing REAL WORLD problems right now in the present.

The unscientific thing to do is mine Google for items which reinforce your opinion on the matter.

According to this story, the thing 'scientists' do is try to get the press to label anyone who disagrees with them as 'deniers.'

Meanwhile real scientists have determined there's no imminent danger from climate change. Once again though, I expect you are too far committed to your opinion to let facts change it.

The consensus from scientists who build models is 'not dangerous. And it IS noteworthy that the models are known to over-estimate the effects of CO2.

If you're going to choose which scientist to 'believe,' then believe the ones who actually collect data, like John Christy. He wanted to know if the AGW hypothesis was correct, so what did he do? He went out and created a dataset from California's central valley, to compare temperatures in settled areas to non-settled areas. He wondered about the accuracy of the global temperature record, so what did he do? He created an alternate way of measuring temperature using satellites. He went to Africa to create datasets, to measure and see what is really happening, while other scientists were creating models (which we now know were inaccurate).

That is how you do science, by collecting data to verify or disprove your hypothesis. You don't beg the press to demonize people you don't like, that's not science.

Not to worry ... Twitter wants in on that action.

"To help build a more personal Twitter experience for you, we are collecting and occasionally updating the list of apps installed on your mobile device so we can deliver tailored content that you might be interested in," the company said.

Yeah, no, thanks.

Didn't want your app before. Don't want it now.

This whole "free to use, but we get all your data" model of software is producing some pretty shitty stuff which is actively hostile to your privacy.

The only way to win is to not even play. Sorry, but I don't need your app.

I'm sorry, you're full of shit and don't have a clue what you're talking about. When you disagree with NASA and CERN and the fossil record you better be able to also drop an SUV on mars from a rocket powered skycrane and hold all the worlds antimatter.

The IPCC has not been right about anything, ever, and if you don't think 75% error is meaningful then 2+2=7 is for you.

You wouldn't happen to be the recipient of a climate grant would you?

"The problem is we don't know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago. That led to some alarmist books – mine included – because it looked clear-cut, but it hasn't happened,” Lovelock said.

“The climate is doing its usual tricks. There’s nothing much really happening yet. We were supposed to be halfway toward a frying world now,” he said.

“The world has not warmed up very much since the millennium. Twelve years is a reasonable time it (the temperature) has stayed almost constant, whereas it should have been rising -- carbon dioxide is rising, no question about that,” he added.
"'I made a mistake'

As “an independent and a loner,” he said he did not mind saying “All right, I made a mistake.” He claimed a university or government scientist might fear an admission of a mistake would lead to the loss of funding."

Oh fuck. The F word. F-f-f-f-f-uding.

https://web.archive.org/web/20...

"Warming" -> http://www.nature.com/nclimate...
http://www.nature.com/nclimate...
http://www.climate.gov/news-fe...
http://www.nasa.gov/press/2014...
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...
http://blog.nj.com/njv_paul_mu...
http://opinion.financialpost.c...
http://www.populartechnology.n...
http://tigger.uic.edu/~pdoran/...
http://www.climatechangedispat...
http://news.ku.dk/all_news/201...

If you have some other explanations of all these or proof of a warming world this might be a good time to drag it out.

http://www.spring.org.uk/2012/...

It is also important to mention that the years of government ignoring Ontario's strength in uranium, hydro and coal resources in favour of Ontario's relatively weak wind resource has resulted in electricity costs rising. The Ontario government's own plan projects a 42% increase in home electric bills from 2013 to 2018 and further to 68% increase by 2032.

In addition, Ontario contracted itself into buying the most expensive, wind-generated electricity first, pays other contracted generators to NOT GENERATE electricity in times of excess supply and sells surplus power to neighbouring jurisdictions at a loss.

I messed up my first link. Here was the correct one.

It was the number of subscribers:

http://business.financialpost....

Estimates of the number of Canadian subscribes are only available from surveys:

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2...

Gain control? For what purpose?

For the same reason politicians become politicians (and policemen become pigs) — the feeling of control over fellow human beings gives them a high...

The way I see it, if this all bogus, we end up with cleaner air, less pollution and a better place to live.

Not obviously, actually. Tesla's wonderful batteries, for example, are a hell to make and aren't particularly easy to dispose of either. The early "green" toilets don't use enough water to do the job quite often — requiring multiple flushes, where an old one would've done with one. The mandatory recycling of this and that requires additional trucks on the road to haul the "special" refuse without clear benefits to the environment — in fact, often enough the stuff ends up in general refuse anyway after incurring all of the costs (financial and environmental) of the separate handling. The certified "green" buildings (sometimes?) use more energy, than regular structures...

You win either way.

Yeah. There is this line of thinking — Blaise Pascal, in his time, put forth the same idea on whether or not God exists.

Good to see, you aren't (any longer?) claiming it is the science, that drives your thinking about global warming... You aren't alone.

Some counterpoints to your trolling.... (found simply by searching "blackberry ltd" on Google News):

• Blackberry Handset Sales Rising
• Blackberry in Catbird Seat as Encrypted Messaging Enters Mainstream
• BlackBerry Wins Gold in Best in Biz Awards 2014 International
• Blackberry Q2 Sales Rising
• Blackberry shares lead TSX
• BlackBerry nabs ‘perfect match’ in Germany’s Secusmart, burnishing anti-spying security credentials
• Blackberry Receives DISA Approval for Multi-Platform Management
• The top bullish move of Wynnefield Capital was boosting stake in BlackBerry Ltd. (NASDAQ:BBRY) by over 60%

Think about it this way. Nuclear supports the status quo - centralized production via corporations. Solar and wind kill the cash cow.

Hardly, and they sure won't kill the "status quo" when FiT programs are paying $0.40-0.85/KwH for electricity from those sources. Welcome to Ontario, which followed Greece and we are now screaming towards the most expensive electricity in North America thanks to "green power." Even though nearly 70% of our electricity is generated by nuclear, less than 2% is wind or solar.

Oh and I'm sure someone will cry, but you don't have a nuclear generating station near you! Right, I've got one of the largest in the world 60 miles from where I'm sitting now.

Be we aren't having those becasue people keep lying and denying scientific facts. There is a reason denier don't actually talk about the scientific facts, but instead lye and cherry pick....... The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D...

Yeah, that matches you again. If you actually knew the facts, you'd realize that not only are the models wrong, but also even if the worst models were right, that still wouldn't be a reason to try to get the number back to 300ppm.

But you don't want to talk about those scientific facts, or do you?

When the hell is the debate going to shift from 'IF' to 'Now what the fuck are we going to do?'

Well, people start debating that, Warmists shout them down as if they are deniers. This article suggests the consensus is we should do nothing, mainly because AGW won't be CAGW.

See for example, this quote:

"The IPCC produced two reports last year. One said that the cost of climate change is likely to be less than 2% of GDP by the end of this century. The other said that the cost of decarbonizing the world economy with renewable energy is likely to be 4% of GDP."

I have found many people who believe in catastrophic man-made global warming are incredibly ignorant of what the science actually says.

It is difficult to find a critical voice among the global warming supporters (nobody wants to risk being ostracized as a denier I guess), so if you want to read anything remotely critical of global warming beliefs, you have to turn to the skeptics. (Who objected when James Hansen told everyone that the oceans would boil? Any exaggeration it seems, no matter how blatant, is condoned by pro-warmers.)

But when you read what the IPCC actually has to say about the issue, you get a different picture. I always see the pro-warminst sites trying their best to make these 'official reports' sound as gloomy as possible. On the other hand, check out Matt Ridley's interpretation. Or on video if you like.

Also, there is now a strategic security/economical/political dimension to the energy transition for Germany much like there is for the USA concerning Oil independence that has only been reinforced by the Ukraine crisis.

Two things:

1) The USA is a net exporter of petroleum products (we import some oil, but export more refined petroleum products than the oil we import makes) these days.

That's news to me.... a net oil exporter is somebody whose domestic production exceeds domestic consumption leaving a surplus to export. According to EIA statistics about 40% of the crude oil consumed in the USA in 2012 came from foreign sources:
http://www.eia.gov/energy_in_b...
According to this article the USA is on it's way to become a net gas exporter, it is already a net coal exporter but unlikely to be come a net crude oil exporter.
http://business.financialpost....

2) Increasing dependence on natural gas rather than coal by Germany makes them more vulnerable to things like the Ukraine situation.

They are planning to synthesize a natural gas substitute from hydrogen and CO2 scrubbed from the atmosphere or collected off of decomposing biomass. How is that increasing dependence on Russian gas? If this pans out, and P2G is currently getting massive amounts of research money, the Germans will even be able to recycle their existing natural gas infrastructure for storage of excess energy. They'd at the very least be able significantly reduce eliminate Russia's importance as a gas supplier. The best case scenario would of course be to eliminate reliance on Russian gas since it is a significant a strategic liability.

That's extremely short-sighted. Eventually the economy wins because we have less of the pollution and other environmental damage from coal.

HAIL! And good greetings from the province of Ontairo! The land where we just finished taking our coal power plants offline, blew $1B not to build new gas plants because NIMBY's threw a fit. And pay anywhere between 40c/KwH to 83c/KwH to "green energy producers" to not produce electricity! This has driven up the cost of energy here by quite a bit, going by the latest projections we'll be paying upwards of 16c/KwH in the next few years. Enjoy those dreams of cheap electricity, because the businesses are fuckin' fleeing from here and the economy is dying.

One way to preserve elephants in a semi-natural habitat became a business model: http://business.financialpost....

... ....but the money can't hurt....even if it won't help it sure seems like it should. We're addicted to the fantasy that it buys everything.

It doesn't?

Go look at the results Tom Steyer is getting for political donations - the scale of which make anything the Koch's spend look like chump change.

Steyer founded Farallon Capital, which made billions investing in - get this - fossil fuels including coal:

During Steyer’s tenure, Farallon helped finance coal project acquisitions in Indonesia and Australia valued at more than US$2 billion and covering some of the region’s biggest mines, some of which swiftly ramped up production afterward, according to a close examination by Reuters of company disclosures and interviews with people involved in the deals.

And Farallon is a major (controlling?) stockholder in Kinder Morgan, a pipeline company. A pipeline company trying to expand one "TransMountain Pipeline". That expanded pipeline would compete with the Keystone pipeline - and would move more Canadian oil than the Keystone pipeline is supposed to. For sale to Asian markets.

Self-proclaimed "green" Tom Steyer paid for ads opposing the Keystone pipeline. But stands to make hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars off the TransMountain pipeline if the Keystone pipeline isn't built. By shipping the oil over the Pacific...

Who says spending money doesn't get political results?

As I understand this, a vulnerable server can expose its private SSL key to an attacker. With this private key, I can decrypt all of its encrypted SSL traffic.

This correct so far?

Yes.

Now, as I understand this so far, having the private key is great, but I need to be able to MITM the connection to decrypt anything.

You can do that, but you can also get random memory of the SSL server. Here's a real case where personal data was stolen from the Canada Revenue Agency: http://business.financialpost....

Canadian telcos have also been busy buying university research.

Canada has only 3 large telco companies, and they all work together. they do wonderful free market things like raise their prices simultanously last week..

Jeffery Church from University of Alberta seems to have taken a pro-incumbent stance in his research. he has been presenting this research at conferences indicating canada's incumbents are playing fair. read the paper here. he's also been busily writing pro-incumbent columns for the National Post.

Dwayne Winseck from Carleton University has been calling bullshit on this bought research, and you can hear his criticism of the paper and the comm industry on his CanadaLand podcast interview.

http://business.financialpost.... When Tesla offers to pay the owner of the car for the damages to his home, the guy declines. Now, call me stupid, but that's a little weird no?

Its not really that unusual. He likely has fire insurance that will cover the damage to his house and would rather deal with the insurance company than directly with Tesla. The insurance company can send the bill to Tesla and deal with the hassle, administrative details and lawyers, rather than the car owner.

http://business.financialpost.... When Tesla offers to pay the owner of the car for the damages to his home, the guy declines. Now, call me stupid, but that's a little weird no?

Google doesn't give Youtube the money to upgrade their infrastructure? Verizon's fault!

If YouTube is slow for you, it's not because it's slow at Google's end. This is why Google is starting to rate carriers by video performance, because they're tired of being blamed for what carriers are doing (or not doing). The rating project is so far only rolled out in Canada: http://business.financialpost....

Its about $C 0.085 / kW/h. (Eight and half cents Canadian per kilowatt hour). The cost of power has stayed relatively constant. There are natural gas powered power (electricity) plants; there are at least 30 large wind farms within 100 km of Theo, plus some hydroelectric (dams) plants. One wind farm recently announced is owned by Ikea. The one grace that OpenBSD has it that it's secure. It has no other redeeming values. Theo could start a consulting end of it. I know it goes against the very grain of... but if he's having a hard time with the light bill, a lot of people are interested in security. Figure it out.

Because they are usually required to pay customers a lot more for feed-in power than they can generate it for, with no allowance for their internal cost overheads, etc.

Of course, and this in turn is offset by higher electricity prices. Surprise, and welcome to Ontario, Canada. Where electricity prices will jump 33% in the next 3 years thanks to "green energy." This will make it one of the most expensive places in North America to buy electricity. And what's funny? These "green energy retrofits and FiT programs" account for under 14% of generation.

If Justin Beiber had a Blackberry, would that make you one of the cool kids?

Maybe it's the fault of libertarians that seem to make up a significant percentage of the tech demographic; wanting to kill the Affordable Healthcare Act. Or tea party programmers wanting the same thing who managed to get on the project. Come on man! Think of some more conspiracies!! Lovin' it.

Of course it couldn't be the incompetence of contracting companies that seem to make a living because they have or aim to have some sort of inside track in Washington rather than the chops to do the actual thing that needs doing. Of course that would never happen in Washington or any other political capital. I'm not saying the way the primary contractor, Quebec company CGI, does business in any way follows recent Quebec business practices. They are probably a well above board and good honest corporate citizen (although according to the Washington Post article above they did screw up another medical system based project). I'm just saying that if Quebec ever did separate from Canada, as it is now, they'd have to think up some other adjective to describe it. It's too cold to grow bananas there.

Frankly (and personally) though, I wouldn't trust any company to government contracts with stated aims published in their profiles like: "The ultimate aim is to establish relations so intimate with the client that decoupling becomes almost impossible," (see Washington Post article). Especially not from Quebec.

Besides replacing the $1 and $2 bills with coins and ditching the penny, Canada is also gradually replacing paper bills with bills made from polymer; which is supposed to be more durable than paper bills. Here’s what Canada’s new $5 and $10 polymer bills look like.

I thought the WHO did a study that discovered the effects of mass evacuations were far more damaging than simply staying in the affected areas were - that the stress caused by panic and hysteria over doses of radiation that aren't particularly high is more damaging than the radiation could be. This is the first google result I could find but I'm sure there was a proper report from the WHO.

I also notice that the rhetoric has changed from 'all radiation is deadly evil' to 'ok it's probably not that bad... but you might eat some!!! Horrible death!!!!'. Pro-nuclear types always get moaned at for changing their story, but I notice the anti-nuclear brigade have changed their concerns as well. Is that because of the complete lack of even illness, let alone deaths, due to radiation from Fukushima, including amongst those who are cleaning up the mess? Is it because when people looked at it they realised the linear-no-threshold approach to determining the risk of radiation is pretty weak scientifically (disproven in some studies that found low levels of radiation are beneficial and even necessary)? Is it because a lot of the world is more radioactive anyway and people still live there without coming to a significantly greater level of harm? Is it because although there is a - greater than any nuclear disaster in some cases - risk of floods, volcanoes, hurricanes, typhoons, earthquakes and - not wanting to be insensitive - tsunamis people still seem to live pretty happy lives in those areas?

Perhaps because a couple of years ago the world was ending, Tokyo was going to be evacuated, the US was going to be irradiated as it all drifted across the ocean, dogs and cats would be living together etc. but actually what we have is a lot of water (a lot of which could have just been dispersed in the ocean), a huge decontamination operation (which probably could have been targeted at areas with actual significant radiation rather than just removing inches of topsoil from entire prefectures), no deaths (other than those caused by the evacuation - oh and the 10's of thousands caused by the Tsunami itself). It must be a big disappointment to the serious doomsday-scenario junkies that none of their predictions have come true so far. It is a disaster, but those happen pretty regularly. More people died from car bombs in the middle east last week than due to Fukushima. 300,000 people were evacuated - Syria has over a million registered refugees already and a death toll of 115,000. The Rwandan genocide has a death toll estimated at 500,000-1,000,000. Fukushima was a big accident, will cost a fortune to clean up, but is nowhere near the scale of disaster it's made out to be.

Well, you're not incorrect technically, but haven't you wondered why everyone is so afraid of buying them?

Blackberry's assets are far beyond their current $4.5 billion market cap, so technically if you sold all their pieces you'd get more than what you'd pay in stock for the company.

The reason nobody is buying them is because they are losing $1 billion per quarter, and it would cost almost $2 billion to shutdown the hardware manufacturing unit. So let's say you pay $5 billion for the company, and you sell off all the assets (but you'll be at least another 2 quarters in by then), so now you've got another 2 quarters of $1 bln losses, and you've gotta shut down the manufacturing unit, and find buyers for the rest (assuming you want to sell). The deal isn't looking so great now, and it's got a lot of overhead (the Canadian gov't who is protecting them rather fiercely).

Well, you're not incorrect technically, but haven't you wondered why everyone is so afraid of buying them?

Blackberry's assets are far beyond their current $4.5 billion market cap, so technically if you sold all their pieces you'd get more than what you'd pay in stock for the company.

The reason nobody is buying them is because they are losing $1 billion per quarter, and it would cost almost $2 billion to shutdown the hardware manufacturing unit. So let's say you pay $5 billion for the company, and you sell off all the assets (but you'll be at least another 2 quarters in by then), so now you've got another 2 quarters of $1 bln losses, and you've gotta shut down the manufacturing unit, and find buyers for the rest (assuming you want to sell). The deal isn't looking so great now, and it's got a lot of overhead (the Canadian gov't who is protecting them rather fiercely).

Apparently Telus' deal to buy Mobilicity got blocked by the government yesterday. When Mobilicity won their spectrum block in 2009, it was on the condition that it not be sold to any of the existing wireless providers for at least five years. As you said, the intention was to bring in some competition for the big three. Mobilicity had been warned the sale would be blocked on that reason alone, but they went ahead and got approval from everyone else first (shareholders, regulatory approval, etc.) I guess they were hoping that the government would just rubber-stamp the sale if all other parties had approved it.

I expect Rogers will get the same response.

I'm hoping that the CRTC will keep sticking up for consumers; they seem to be one of the few government agencies which are engaging with the public rather than the incumbent service providers. if Telus were enjoined from acquiring Mobilicity, we should also hope that Rogers is blocked from purchasing the same AWS spectrums (UMTS 1700) from Shaw, which obtained the mobilicity/public/wind spectrum in the same initial auction which formed the upstart companies. this spectrum was provided to Shaw to create competition in western Canada, but its sale to Rogers would work against competition.

I see you haven't been following the RBC saga up here in Canada, where the Royal Bank of Canada has been 'outsourcing' workers and replacing Canadian ones.

In related news, Qualcomm worth more than Intel.

They're mandatory in Ontario and as far as I know, the entire province has them installed, so this could get very interesting to say the least. Or until the meters are all updated, well I was always against them to begin with. Our hydro rates have done nothing but increase since they've been installed. Right on track for 22c/KWH by 2016 baby! Gotta love it.

There's an easy answer. They could simply build some wind mills or slap in some solar panels and then have the utility pay them at 30-80c/Kwh via a FiT(feed in tariff) like we do here in Ontario for green energy. I'm sure that it would all balance out in time.

I dunno, could be the thousands of sites that have been cracked over the last 20 years (some publicized, most not.) Have you not been reading about the growing hacker war between China and the rest of the world? Someone with DEEP pockets could get to anybody's data if they so wanted. That seems way more likely to me, and the police in question do in fact have a squad who investigates cybercrime. This isn't exactly a South American backwater.

You have WAY too much faith in the incompetent buffoons of the Norfolk Constabulary. One of the first things they did was to seize the computers from the guy that ran a blog where links to the leaked emails were first posted, including his adsl router. Really? The blog wasn't even hosted on those computers!

Any claim from these guys that they know how the emails were obtained has no credibility whatsoever. Better to just listen to the experts.

And by introducing self-destructing plastic currency we won't have a choice...
    http://business.financialpost.com/2012/07/12/new-plastic-bills-reportedly-melting-in-summer-heat/

Well that's what happened here in Ontario, Canada. It got worse a bit further down the road when they decided to shove green energy down everyone's throat and kill the coal power plants. Last time I heard Ontario would have the highest power rates in North America by the end of 2013 if projections hold true, mostly due to our *lovely* FiT(Feed in Tariff) program. Which is currently paying a kick ass bounty rate as high as 68c/KWH for solar and wind power.

Fuck "clean" energy give me nuclear, coal and natural gas. Actually fuck it, I'm moving to Saskatchewan.

I think the government is waking up. I also think most Canadians are starting to realize that America is not the wonderful friend nor a force for democracy and liberty like they were in the olden days. Whether you supported the Keystone project or not, the American cancellation of it was pure politics and a signal to Canada that Canadians should not trust America. Perhaps the rejection of Keystone was a good thing in that it has forced the Canadian government to acknowledge the USA is not a reliable trading partner and Canada should look for new friends. http://business.financialpost.com/2012/01/25/harper-builds-oil-link-with-china-after-obama-keystone-slap

Sorry, the middle class in China is more important to our businesses than Americans are, given that the middle class in China is larger than the entire American population. Of course, we'll continue to ignore the hundreds of millions of peasants in poverty, just like they're ignored in the US. Bad for profits, you see.

And, keep in mind, the upper class lifestyle that most people in the US attribute to being middle class is possible because of the massive decrease in manufacturing costs for their lifestyle goods that China provides.

Sorry, the middle class in China is more important to our businesses than Americans are, given that the middle class in China is larger than the entire American population. Of course, we'll continue to ignore the hundreds of millions of peasants in poverty, just like they're ignored in the US. Bad for profits, you see.

You are correct. Apple themselves are not obnoxious, their users are.

When the average cost to transfer a gigabyte of data is below 5 cents - http://business.financialpost.com/2011/02/05/how-much-does-bandwidth-actually-cost/ - I don't buy all these complaints from carriers about customers using huge amounts of data, especially since the typical "unlimited" (heh) data plan costs $30/month. At that rate, a customer would have to transfer 600 gigabytes of data in a given month to equal the raw cost of that bandwidth to the carrier.

Now, admittedly, that is based on the raw cost of bandwidth, and, of course, other factors come into play in figuring the cost of delivering that data ...

Just for the record, the link you provided talks about wired bandwidth, not wireless bandwidth. If you're providing wireless bandwidth ... you have to pay for the wired bandwidth up to your cell phone tower, and then pay for that tower and all the bandwidth (and this is actual bandwidth here -- "a spot from X MHz to Y MHz") it uses.

So this isn't exactly a fair comparison.