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Lol, that sounds like a Rush Limbaugh pitch. Enjoy your large footprint under-the-monitor desktop with the giant red rocker power switch on the side and turbo button.

Actually, Rush is apparently doing so, except that the Mac Pro has a power button on the front and no turbo button. He's also waiting for the Mac Pro to get an upgrade. :-)

(Oh, and Obama quite likely knows about Apple....)

And I am sure that most iPhone are still version 3 or lower out there. What's your point?

You're sure? Why is that? Any data? Or is it just you?

Actually, the upgrade/adoption rate for iOS is amazingly good, in both absolute numbers and in comparison to Android. (Note: I am not making any "this OS is better than that OS" statements, just talking about documented statistics.)

iOS 3.x usage looks to be in the single-digit range, while iOS 5.x was quickly adopted by up to 75% of iOS users. Source: http://thenextweb.com/apple/2012/03/06/why-do-developers-prefer-ios-over-android-try-75-adoption-of-ios-5-while-ics-is-stuck-at-1/

I get really tired of this frame of stories that assume Apple is the alpha and the omega.

When you start out like that you just look uninformed.

The fact is you should care if Apple is entering a niche because it means that other options may well dry up.

I don't really care about the Amazon or Nook tablets because they are trying to run the same Apple game plan, poorly

Poorly? Both seem to have done really well. Amazon has a tablet that lets people easily hook into the benefits of the media Amazon provides, and they have done a good job of selling devices.

I don't want to semi-buy a tethered device that is more a tethered window into it's owner's cloud than a computer that [I] control.

All of these tablets are computers you can easily control. Why then ignore the very real benefits that derive from the tablet maker also offering a hook into convenient cloud services?

iCloud will happily back up a jailbroken iPad as easily as a non-jailbroken iPad...

In other words, tablet computers instead of iPad clones. You can keep your subsidized[1] media players; I'm a nerd and I buy computers.

You claim you are a nerd, yet you discard the best hardware on the market (not just Apple), hardware that as you admit is perhaps cheaper through subsidization - that you don't even have to use!

A true nerd doesn't care what features a device ships with, just how much control they have over a device and what the hardware is. The iPad is as controllable a device as anything after jailbreaking - which even non-nerds can do, yet it seems to be too intimidating for you.

Weak sauce man. If you want be a nerd or hacker, be that - but don't proclaim some hardware is beyond your nerd-love simply because of extra features targeting the masses that you don't even have to activate.

Apple was never in that shape. They had billions in the bank. The issue was MS continuing Office support

“We were 90 days from going bankrupt.” - Steve Jobs.

More details. and from a Mac fan site perspective

So basically, yes, they were in that shape, no, they did not have billions in the bank.

If Apple trades another phone for a stolen one that someone brings in, isn't it now in possession of stolen property and couldn't the owner demand it back?

Yes, and it has happened, before, actually.

http://thenextweb.com/apple/2012/01/03/apples-theft-policies-in-question-after-it-gives-a-thief-a-free-replacement-iphone/

Thief steals iPhone. Police warn Apple Store there's a thief who may bring a stolen iPhone in. Thief walks out with new iPhone since old one is locked. Police reclaim stolen iPhone from Apple and give it back to owner.

Apple is out one iPhone (the one the thief got) and owner got their iPhone back. Apple loses in this situation.

Of course, there's also big issues with bricking phones - if you allow that, then someone is gonna get their phone bricked as a prank by their friends. Especially if the only way to recover is to take it in for service, and then you'll get a bunch of complaints about this happening.

Oh, and the carriers don't benefit from stolen phones unless the thief activates it - you can phone your carrier, tell them your phone is stolen and they'll deactivate the SIM (which requires a new SIM to reactivate), so your thief can only run up the bill during the time he steals the phone and when you notice and call to cancel.

And if it has a 1024x768 screen (same was as iPad 1 & iPad 2), it will accomodate the apps fine.

Of course, it will have to come with sandpaper so users can file down their fingers.

And not a dime of it is going to the people who made the thing you're looking for.

That's their own fault.

Content providers refuse to accept money for the service that the customers want, while The Pirate Bay provides a superior service for free.

Someone already has won a patent on the concept of online auctions. All you have to do is take anything people do anyway, add "but do it online!" and you have your new patent. It's pretty awful.

People in the developed world, in line with their general ignorance of developing countries, seem to not be aware of some important facts. India is set to overtake the U.S. as the world’s largest Facebook market by number of users as early as 2015. 7% of India has internet access, and given India's population, even 7% of its population amounts to more people than many Western European countries. Internet censorship is therefore a big deal and it will affect the lives of millions. Like all developing countries, India grapples with poverty. But on the other end, the rich and middle-class in India are at levels of Western society, in terms of both awareness and with a very major stake in the internet.

I asked evi on my android phone and it said:

I can't really give advice. I'm much better with matters of fact.Here's what I found online though. Try Apple's Siri: Nokia Lumia Is The Best Smartphone Ever.
Would you like to see some more results?

I guess you are quoting desktop market share. That is the wrong statistic to account for the number of Firefox users on each platform. Most Linux users are probably using Firefox. Don't most Windows users still use IE? And most Mac OS users use Safari? So the total desktop market share won't correspond to the distribution of Firefox users on each desktop.

(Also, Mac OS only recently got 5% market share. Not 12%.)

having the worlds largest mobile phone manufacturer Nokia by the balls?

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA, Microsoft + Nokia, taking the world by storm! Windows Phones everywhere! HAHAHAHAHA! They're gonna expand that 0.41 percent market share into something important real soon now!

Anyway, that's all I -- HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

I call your HAHAHA and raise a shadenfreude.

having the worlds largest mobile phone manufacturer Nokia by the balls?

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA, Microsoft + Nokia, taking the world by storm! Windows Phones everywhere! HAHAHAHAHA! They're gonna expand that 0.41 percent market share into something important real soon now!

Anyway, that's all I -- HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Google has admitted that it is lobbying on the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA)

And who has a long history of censoring results from their search engine if they happen to contain unlicensed copyrighted content. They could fight it, like they did fight in China after demands to that government, but they decide not to. Not in Google, not in YouTube, nowhere. And then they support CISPA.

Google has admitted that it is lobbying on theCyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), The Hill has learned

Here’s Google on its public stance on CISPA: “We think this is an important issue and we’re watching the process closely but we haven’t taken a formal position on any specific legislation.”

Google is not alone in supporting CISPA, if it in fact does, as it will join tech giants Microsoft and Facebook in doing so, among others.

Still want to argue about this?

To be fair, TFA is titled "Aviva Investors Accidentally Fires Entire Company Via Email [FULL TEXT]." But, TFA links to another article as its source. But that source isn't the origin of the story either. It came from Reuters. Honestly, if you're submitting a story to a news aggregator like Slashdot, take the time to send a link for the ORIGINAL story...

No inside info here sorry.

I did not know the Microsoft deal had the precondition to dump Meego/Tizen, I figured it just had the precondition to produce a WP7 phone.

But I do not think the rumors of two new Nokia MeeGo phones would persist at all if Nokia had the precondition to dump Meego; although it appears the rumored phones will at best have the MeeGo GUI and run S40.

A little Google searching on the topic does not reveal any such agreement to abandon Meego, at most Nokia agreed to make Windows Phone its primary platform, do you have a sources to clarify that Nokia has to kill all in house MeeGo development? I hope I have not missed something: paidCOntent, Telegraph, CNet, The Next Web, Microsoft.

But I am sure that it is wishful thinking to think that Nokia will drop Windows Phone and get back behind MeeGo in full force any time soon, if ever...

As of two months ago, iCloud had over 100M users. This is not a small feature that isn't widely used. It's entirely likely that the majority of iOS users are using it at this point already.

I left slashdot for a couple of years because I got sick of the misogynistic comments, and to be honest I don't know why I'm reading slashdot comments again as it's a huge waste of time.

Far as I can tell the misogynistic comments come mostly from two groups, trolls and divorcees. And misogynistic divorcees aren't strictly a geek thing by any means.

This is a great brogrammer fiasco though: http://thenextweb.com/us/2012/03/20/sqoot-loses-sponsors-following-misogynistic-description-of-their-api-jam-event/

From that web page I originally misread the statement "Women: Need another beer? Let one of our friendly (female) event staff get that for you" as attempting to target women and wondered why I should care about the gender of the beer server. Needless to say when the intended meaning sunk in I was kind of wondering WTF these people are thinking.

Yeah, and a lot of people thought the same thing, which is why they lost sponsors.

Another occasionally reoccurring instance of sexism are the guys bonding by joking over how their wives act. I am standing in a circle with a few other guys after a sales meeting who all have probably a minimum of 20 years on me and they are talking about their "honey-do" list and I'm thinking to myself this is good example of some of the BS women don't want to put up with.

You lost all credibility with me here. Why would you think that's sexism? It's certainly a cultural clash, but an unmarried man your age would have been equally excluded.

Some other woman, a sysadmin, told me she made a point of wearing low cut business clothes (which should be an oxymoron) every couple of months so that people would take her more seriously. She also said she had more successful interviews when she went wearing that getup as opposed to more normal clothing. If that's not sexism I don't know what is. Personally it's not a theory I want to test.

Hmm... so a woman uses her physical appearance to gain an advantage in interviews, and it's the fault of men for falling for it?

They stopped innovating years ago - copying Google is about the only thing they can do these days. And what's with the word "mobile" in this me too effort - it's not like they've ever had any relevance there, or ever will.

My guess is that this is a problem with an automated system trying to deal with roughly 800 million videos generating so many false positives that the cost of having a human look at every disputed video is cost prohibitive. Until Rumblefish sees a consequence, I doubt they're going to change their process. It's offensive to me that they don't treat other people's copyrighted works as well as they would like their client's work to be treated, but they probably see inserting ads as harmless.

I did send both Rumblefish and YouTube an e-mail expressing my disappointment. YouTube is now removed from my ad blocker exclusion list.

There are alternatives to YouTube : http://thenextweb.com/socialmedia/2012/02/20/5-video-sharing-alternatives-to-youtube/. YouTube/Google may see their advertisers as their customers, but you have to have a worthwhile demographic looking at the ads to make them worth anything.

I started poking around Vimeo and was impressed. No Tosh.0 material, but quite a bit of interesting viewing. Of course the amount of content can't compare with YouTube, so I'm probably still stuck with it when I'm looking for something specific, but when you're looking for something randomly interesting it's worth a visit.

Can't be that bad, otherwise why would 94% of iPhone users buy another iPhone but only 47% of android users would buy another android?

Out of 216 people surveyed... yeah, that's totally statistically significant.

0.75 percent point. The relative difference is quite large.

Can't be that bad, otherwise why would 94% of iPhone users buy another iPhone but only 47% of android users would buy another android? Honestly I don't care if apps on one phone crash 0.75% more than on the other, the real question is would you buy another model of that phone? If the answer is yes then obviously the crashes aren't bad enough to want to switch.

Sent from my iPhone

How is this different

How is this different from when Google uses open source? There's a great article about the supposed openness by Google here

Some good points from it:

Where Google is losing you can count on them pushing the open label in order to build momentum & destroy the asymmetrical information advantages of existing market leaders. But where Google leads non-transparency is the norm.

- At the same time Google is trying to push social sites to offer transparent data, they decided to block some Google search referral data (unless you are paying for the clicks, then you get that data).

- When planning some of the features behind Google+ one of their employees wrote a book about the social circles concept with Google's blessings. Then, after he wrote the book, Google revoked permission to publish it!

- Android is open but internal Google emails revealed that carriers were getting wise to Google using compatibility as a club.

- The Panda update was needed to rid the web of garbage content. And yet Google is pre-paying Demand Media to post videos on YouTube. Since the Panda update downstream Google traffic to YouTube has more than doubled & YouTube is serving over a trillion streams per year!

- In spite of not having permission to do so, Google has been scanning books for nearly a decade now. Yet whenever Google goes to court they try to get the court documents sealed so that their statements couldn't be used against them.

If you only had to manage competing against other market competitors & staying inside Google's editorial guidelines then investment isn't that difficult, but if you have to stay within Google's guidelines in the short term yet try to build a business that is sustainable even after Google enters & destroys the market it is far more difficult.

A Self-serving Bias You Can Count On
When Google enters a market it might buy out a competitor, buy out a supplier, bundle, use predatory pricing, grant themselves superior search placement, adjust the relevancy algorithms and/or editorial guidelines, violate IP, scrape 3rd party content, work with sketchy advertisers & publishers to undermine competing business models, or any combination of the above.

They are rarely transparent with their interests when they enter a market. Almost everything is labeled as "a beta" and "just a test." They promise to "act appropriately" & you may not be aware of the steamroller until you are under it.

Google can bundle themselves into markets, but when others do the same it is a big no no:

A Google spokesman said "applications that are installed without clear disclosure, that are hard to remove and that modify users' experiences in unexpected ways are bad for users and the Web as a whole."

Google's founding research highlighted how bad ad-driven search engines were & then Google's core revenue engine of paid search was built on their violation of Overture's patent. They keep

Samsung seems to be backing Tizen now: http://thenextweb.com/mobile/2012/01/09/samsung-backed-open-source-mobile-os-tizen-leaks-in-new-screenshots/ This is interesting, taking Samsung's position in Android: http://mobile.slashdot.org/story/12/01/09/2151233/samsung-could-soon-start-to-twist-googles-arm Maybe I actually will find a good replacement for my Maemo-based N900... :)

Samsung apparently backs Tizen, the latest Maemo/MeeGo derivate: http://thenextweb.com/mobile/2012/01/09/samsung-backed-open-source-mobile-os-tizen-leaks-in-new-screenshots/ This could all prove very interesting!

I didn't mean the summary here, I meant more like these:

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2011-08-15-cnbc-it-jobs-unemployment_n.htm

http://thenextweb.com/insider/2011/06/09/tech-sector-unemployment-half-the-u-s-national-average/

http://marketing.dice.com/techtalentdemand/

Maybe they're lying, but reports throughout the recession have said tech sector unemployment has remained at half (or less) of unemployment nationwide.

iPhone web apps do use webkit to render the UI though. Are web apps too slow to be usable as a result of this? Did users complain that WebOS was too slow? And if so, was it really slow because of webkit? This article clearly blames the hardware rather than the software, stating that WebOS itself ran twice as fast on iPad level hardware. And if WebOS was too slow to be usable, then how come everyone raved about it once they dropped the price? Very few people are so enthusiastic about platforms that are so "fatally flawed". Was it all just marketing hubris?

MLB's At Bat app for the iPhone and other phones is one of the best sports apps I've ever seen. Players have adopted iPads as a scouting aid. I don't know where the author makes the claim that sports are technophobic; perhaps a better way of putting it is that they're slow to adopt, but that's not the same thing as Luddism.

Lol that's some Kool Aid your offering. Its been estimated there are 350,000 Android devices being activated each day. While that number seems high to me, it wouldn't surprise me if its mostly on the mark; http://thenextweb.com/mobile/2011/03/07/in-the-us-android-is-now-the-number-one-smartphone-os/ .

IT unemployment is much lower than the national numbers. It's around 4% versus 9%. http://thenextweb.com/insider/2011/06/09/tech-sector-unemployment-half-the-u-s-national-average/

Most IT workers already have a job when they are negotiating a new position. Corporations are usually scrambling to find a technically qualified person who is presentable and shows up on time. In IT, there is much more leverage in negotiations, and that only increases as skill and experience increases.

I don't see a whole lot of .NET, Java, or Oracle developers unemployed for more than a few weeks, and even then they are waiting to apply for positions just so they can have a little time off. PHP and ColdFusion developers are a different story.

This didn't seem to do that good of a job, but was 2 years ago.

  * Sonar Ruler, By Laan Labs: http://itunes.apple.com/app/sonar-ruler/id324621243?mt=8
  * http://thenextweb.com/2009/08/20/amazing-iphone-app-lets-measure-distance-echoes-works/

Happy measuring!

From the article :

Bouwen highlighted the value of a “turn-taking mechanism” that determines who should be next to speak.

In person, two people who begin to speak to a group at the same time tend to take their cues from the direction in which most group members are looking.

Those subtle cues are lost in current videoconferences, Bouwen said.

Note the subtle shift from telepresence to videoconference. The whole point of telepresence is that these sorts of cues ("gaze awareness," in the industry) are not lost. Polycom, Cisco, etc., are very aware of this and work hard to make this happen.

I don't think these sort of robots would replace telepresence rooms, but would be used (as the article says) in meetings with only one remote participants.

Oh, and robots like this are already on the market.

âoeWe were 90 days from going bankrupt.â -- Steve Jobs.
They were so near bankruptcy they had to accept a $150 million bail out from their arch-competitor rival.
http://thenextweb.com/apple/2010/06/02/steve-jobs-90-days/

They were probably 90 days from going to the point of no return where if they continued on their current path, then yes, Apple was heading towards the drain. At which point investors and everyone else would give up - even if Apple released an "insanely great" product then, no one would pay attention to it as they believe Apple would be dead.

Fact is, Steve Jobs joined Apple in 1997. The iMac came out in 1998. More than 90 days elapsed, so technically, Apple should've gone into bankruptcy. Instead, Jobs made some significant changes - of which Apple could sustain because they had a big bankroll. Hell, Apple just bought NeXT for $400M!

That $150M Microsoft investment was a drop in the bucket compared to cash on hand (Apple was still quite debt-free).

In fact, that $150M was the shrewdest business move in the world. Microsoft was flush with cash, Apple was in "dire straits" with investors. What better way to show investors that "Apple is alive and well" by having Microsoft put in a token sum of money into Apple? It's basically Gates' pocket change for Microsoft, and Apple gets an itty-bitty bump in stock price. BUT, it signalled to people that yes, if MICROSOFT was willing to put up money (a tiny amount of money) into Apple, perhaps they should as well.

Investors are lemmings. If they see someone doing something interesting, they follow. Seeing Microsoft put money into Apple? Sure, they'll hand over cash to Apple as well. And that was the whole business move behind that $150M. It wasn't a "rescue" package of case - it was a rescue package of investor confidence in Apple.

Apple was never near bankruptcy.

“We were 90 days from going bankrupt.” -- Steve Jobs.
They were so near bankruptcy they had to accept a $150 million bail out from their arch-competitor rival.
http://thenextweb.com/apple/2010/06/02/steve-jobs-90-days/

"Reality Distortion Field"? Were you determined to show that you're a hater who doesn't know what he's talking about? Was ignorance of the financial reality not enough for you?

By the time Apple brought Jobs back, their market share had been falling for 5 years. It did of course take awhile to turn the ship around. But Mac market share has been growing again since around 2004. Obviously the point at which falling market share tuens to rising market share is the lowest point. Thus it's bound to happen during the tenure of the platform's saviour.
http://fairerplatform.com/2011/07/apples-18-year-mac-odyssey/

Killing Mac clones, developing new Mac with high design standards, and creating OSX from NeXTStep were all parts of the way Jobs saved the platform. None of that is "Reality Distortion". It's reality. Real life success. Part of the bigger success that turned Apple from near bankruptcy to the largest company in the world in 14 years.

Whether you like it or not.

1. Chrome trend is at a whooping 20% http://thenextweb.com/google/2011/07/01/google-chrome-has-20-market-share-firefox-in-its-sights/ 2. I have yet to see safari on a tablet, name one that ain't an ipad 3. Nobody uses the Android browser LOL, firefox or [there's one more good one somewhere] are the popular choices.

If MS bought Netscape, I think this might have gone different... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft

I use the android browser. Mainly because when I hit sites with firefox I get the full version usually and with the android browser I get the slimmed down "mobile" version. Wish it wasn't the case, though.

1. Chrome trend is at a whooping 20% http://thenextweb.com/google/2011/07/01/google-chrome-has-20-market-share-firefox-in-its-sights/
2. I have yet to see safari on a tablet, name one that ain't an ipad
3. Nobody uses the Android browser LOL, firefox or [there's one more good one somewhere] are the popular choices.

If MS bought Netscape, I think this might have gone different... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft

I'm still using Mac OS X 10.6, so no 10.7 update for me.

It sounded more like you updated to 10.7.2 and then went on some kind of deleting rampage removing iTunes and kernel extensions, etc.

Nah, I found the support article in the Google cache. So it's only one kernel extension you have to delete, and fewer reboots than I remember because I was thinking of this issue which I ran into once before which does require three reboots.

But at least I've learned not to trust Apple error messages when they tell you to reinstall iTunes instead of just admitting that it's their DRM servers that're preventing you from installing the update.

"The long and short of it is that the demand for iOS 5 is off the charts right now, so being patient is your best option. There’s nothing you can do on your end so have a cup of coffee and wait out the rush."

http://thenextweb.com/apple/2011/10/12/apples-ios-5-upgrade-servers-are-slammed-causing-3200-or-internal-error-update-issues/

Well, at least now I know what's going on:

Apple's iOS 5 upgrade servers are slammed, causing 3200 or "internal error" update issues

Here's the problem with that - if you look at the screenshot in the article, that's the only information you're given. The "3200 error" only appears briefly when you press "More Information" and only in the URL of the link it sends you to.

Thankfully the servers are swamped enough that it took long enough to redirect (finally) for me to notice the error number and be able to search for it. Once it redirects, it sends you to a support article telling you that you need to reinstall iTunes (and make sure no other USB devices are installed, and that your computer is up to date, and that if you've done all that, you're screwed).

The problem was made worse by the support site 503ing briefly, because that meant that instead of the error showing up at all it instantly redirected you to a "site is unavailable" URL. (And, yes, it redirected, so the original URL was gone.)

About the only thing interesting in the Console (which is the log utility for Mac OS X - it's the equivalent of Gnome's "Log Viewer") is the error message "No connection wrapper thingy." Which is mildly amusing.

Oh, hey, it hard-crashed my phone.

OK, so it hadn't, it was just in the middle of rebooting (or something) - which left the screen frozen with a clock several minutes out of date for some reason. And I've yet to get it to repeat that, so, whatever. And it's nice to know how to restart an iPhone, now that Apple's support site is back up and it's possible to look it up again.

"Fun Fact: carry a old dumbphone in your car. When police pull you over turn off and hide your smartphone and hand them the dumbphone. If the dumbphone is dead tell'em the battery died and you don't have a car charger." Unfortunately, they've already got an app for that. http://thenextweb.com/us/2011/04/20/us-police-can-copy-your-iphones-contents-in-under-two-minutes/

I disagree with your premise. Take Twitter, for example: I follow almost none of my IRL friends on it, yet it remains of significant value. Probably moreso than Facebook. I use G+ fairly regularly, but 90% of my stream is from people I don't know personally. The problem is that people see G+ as a Facebook replacement, and while in many ways it is, it's more of a Twitter replacement. Consider the huge draw that the Will.i.am hangouts have had, the hangout with the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu, and the upcoming one with Felicia Day. All of these have a very large pull, and yet none of them involve people I know personally. The same goes from the posts by Dane Cook, Tom Anderson (Tom from Myspace), Mike Elgan, the Googlers, the CyanogenMod team, the Android Central team... On top of that, that 60% now has a Google+ account. Even if they never actively look for their friends on it, some of their friends will circle them. Even if they never post anything on it ever again, people they know will. And every time one of these things happens, a little red box appears on Google's pages letting them know there is something waiting for them on Google+. Every time they check their Gmail, that red notification will be there. If they've installed the app, there's another notification... It doesn't matter that they're not active users right now. They will be. The best explanation I've seen for all this was by Tom Anderson at TNW: http://thenextweb.com/google/2011/08/24/how-google-will-succeed-and-why-youll-use-it-whether-you-want-to-or-not/ I've gotta say, he pretty much hit the nail on the head.

So someone would have to forge a certificate for addons.mozilla.org.

Done!

Whilst you continue extorting $5 per Android handset from HTC your new touchy-feely lets-be-buddies act is worth less than piss froth. So no, I won't even be dignifying your request with a visit to your site out of curiosity.

Is it: Cameron later asked the question: “Are we going to give police the power to track activity on BlackBerry and Twitter?”

If your police detectives can't keep track of trending topics on Twitter, you need better detectives.

Thinking back to OS tests from this specific HP touchpad, iirc, the constraining factor was the hardware. While I'm glad that people will have a developer community in conjunction with this sell-off, porting Android to something with an arguably bad hardware configuration isn't going to solve it.

Or is it: Immediate action needed. LDNers cannot have another evening like last night tonight. BBM clearly helping rioters outfox Police. Suspend it.

I see I've been modded down to "troll" by pointing out something which nobody could seriously dispute.

Such as how little they are willing to work for. Just recently I read a comment here on slashdot from some developer who said his whole team had been working 12-16 hour days for a year and a half with no extra pay...

That's just ridiculous and silly.

It's extremely easy to find a job as a programmer right now which pays highish wages relative to other jobs, and which doesn't require working 12-16 hour days. Although there is significant unemployment right now, that unemployment is almost entirely among the working class, and among people who used to be employed in construction etc, and among millenials. The unemployment rate among experienced programmers is 4% at present, meaning unemployment in that sector is almost entirely frictional. At my company, for example, we're trying to find qualified people to hire, but it's virtually impossible. In other words, the labor market for programmers is as tight as it's ever been, with the possible exception of the 1999-2000 timeframe.

Whoever is working 12-16 hour days for no additional money, for a year and a half, has made a silly choice, and has done himself harm for no reason whatsoever. He has many other easy alternatives, which he chose not to investigate or pursue.

Of course, there are many people in this economy who lack skills or experience, and who are seriously suffering. But here we're getting complaints from programmers who have careers in a field with 4% unemployment.

One needs only to type "software engineer pay" into google and come up with links like this one which clearly indicate that someone with a Bachelor's degree makes $60k-$120k per year (not including benefits), Or I could type "unemployment sector" and find that the unemployment rate for programmers is half the national average and that: "With an unemployment rate of under 4% in the tech sector, there’s a shortage of qualified technology professionals, TechFlash reports." Or I could type into google a query about how many hours most programmers work, and find from the Bureau of Labor Statistics that: "Most software engineers and programmers work 40 hours a week, but about 15 percent of software engineers and 11 percent of programmers worked more than 50 hours a week in 2008" which obviously means that working 12-16 hour days is rare. All this took about 60 seconds of research, but perhaps the people working 12-16 hour days never bothered to type these things into google?

Part of living in a capitalist economy involves looking at the options available to you and selecting the best one given your circumstances. I know there is always some rare person who says something like: "I paid $45,000 for a $25,000 car, because I didn't even bother to walk across the street to some other dealership to look," but it's rare and signifies nothing other than that some lone person got ripped off.

The odd thing is that there's constant complaining on slashdot among people, who are essentially highly privileged or fortunate workers. Programmers make $60-$120k for a Bachelor's degree and work 40 hours per week (which apparently is average, according to the BLS) with an unemployment rate of 4%. Clearly programmers are in the top 1% of workers worldwide, by a very comfortable margin, and are within the top 10% even among the rich countries. Nevertheless, they constantly insist on slashdot that they deserve much more than this and that they're the modern equivalent of slaves, that laws should be passed favoring them even more and that they should form unions etc.

I realize this will be modded down to "troll". Of course, there are a few modders here (not most of them, of course) who think that anything which challenges any idea they have in their heads is a troll. Ohwell...

So when Microsoft says this:

Windows Phone is now the only platform that does so with equal opportunity for all partners.'

Does that mean that everyone gets billions of dollars from MS?

http://thenextweb.com/microsoft/2011/04/21/nokia-and-microsoft-deal-official-definitive-agreement-signed/

As a result of the deal, Nokia will pay Microsoft royalties for the Windows Phone platform, starting only when the Finnish company launches its first Windows Phone devices. Microsoft has also agreed to make payments to Nokia “measured in the billions of dollars” for services but also intellectual property royalties.

Or are we supposed to believe that MS would have paid for Nokia's IP even if Nokia hadn't switched to Windows Phone?

From the article:

The deal will focus on four areas, including the porting of Nokia’s mapping, navigation and location services to the Windows Phone operating system, with Microsoft ensuring its Bing search engine is present on Nokia devices. Combined, the companies hope that it will enable “better monetization of Nokia’s navigation assets” and bring in “new forms of advertising revenue”.

Bing is weak on local and mapping in EU and Asia, so this deal involves that. If another OEM brings something in value to them, I am sure they may pay up.

So when Microsoft says this:

Windows Phone is now the only platform that does so with equal opportunity for all partners.'

Does that mean that everyone gets billions of dollars from MS?

http://thenextweb.com/microsoft/2011/04/21/nokia-and-microsoft-deal-official-definitive-agreement-signed/

As a result of the deal, Nokia will pay Microsoft royalties for the Windows Phone platform, starting only when the Finnish company launches its first Windows Phone devices. Microsoft has also agreed to make payments to Nokia “measured in the billions of dollars” for services but also intellectual property royalties.

Or are we supposed to believe that MS would have paid for Nokia's IP even if Nokia hadn't switched to Windows Phone?