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“Apple, which ended its third quarter with $1.2 billion in cash, will use the additional $150 million to invest in its core markets of education and creative content, Anderson said.”

http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/RDM.Tech.Q1.07/592FE887-5CA1-4F30-BD62-407362B533B9.html

http://lightbox.time.com/2011/10/06/in-a-private-light-diana-walkers-photos-of-steve-jobs/#10

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2010/05/apples-stock-rise-could-have-meant-5-billion-for-microsoft/

“Less than 12 hours before his big announcement, nobody here knows yet about the bombshell to come. In fact, Jobs is still negotiating it here at the Castle--on a cell phone. "Hi, Bill," you hear him say in the echo chamber of the old hall. Then his voice drops, and for nearly an hour he paces the stage, running through last-minute details with Gates. All the while, he leans over his computer, paces, lies down on the stage, paces, lurks in dark corners, paces and talks, paces and talks.

This is the fateful call for the boy titans of the personal-computer revolution, meant to settle the war. At one point, talking about Apple, Jobs says, "There are a lot of good things, happily--and a lot of screwed-up things." Then, to his crew, he yells, "Have we got satellite contact with the other side?" Assured this has been taken care of, he answers a question from Gates about what to wear on the morrow ("I'm just going to wear a white shirt," he assures him), and he finally ends the conversation with a heartfelt "Thank you for your support of this company. I think the world's a better place for it." And so that's how Apple and Microsoft, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, finally seal it--on a cell-phone call.

The deal is vintage Jobs. Amelio began the process of repairing relations between the two longtime rivals. But once he was out the door at Apple, Jobs contacted Gates to try to get talks started again. Gates dispatched his CFO, Gregory Maffei, who met Jobs at his home. Jobs suggested they go for a walk. Grabbing a couple of bottles of mineral water from the fridge, the two took off for a stroll around Palo Alto. Jobs was barefoot. "It was an interesting scene," Maffei recalls. "It was a pretty radical change for the relations between the two companies." The two walked for nearly an hour, through Palo Alto's green university area, as they pounded out the details of a potential deal. Jobs, Maffei says, was "expansive and charming. He said, 'These are things that we care about and that matter.' And that let us cut down the list. We had spent a lot of time with Amelio, and they had a lot of ideas that were nonstarters. Jobs had a lot more ability. He didn't ask for 23,000 terms. He looked at the whole picture, figured about what he needed. And we figured he had the credibility to bring the Apple people around and sell the deal."”

http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/13/3239977/apple-and-microsoft-cross-license-agreement-includes-anti-cloning

http://assets.sbnation.com/assets/1292505/584.pdf

... and if the app isn't free, then Android users will make it free. You know what I'm talking about. Also, Android users vote for Romney.

Nice troll, but you lose(unless you dont count 220.5 as >=220.5

there's another twist of the story that ". According to one source in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the investigation was timed to coincide with Ukrainian First Deputy Prime Minister Valeriy Khoroshkovsky's visit to the United States, after he released a statement with the US Trade Representative agreeing to "redouble" intellectual property enforcement. While the ColoCall source says Demonoid has backup servers elsewhere, nothing has been restored at this point."

http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/6/3223253/demonoid-bittorrent-tracker-shut-down-by-ukrainian-police

so they're doubledowning and redoubling efforts. Maybe they won't bother with finding out who to prosecute and for what, but that's not the point of eastern european lipservice police work really.

http://www.theverge.com/2012/5/23/3023627/oracle-google-trial-patent-verdict

Jury: Google did not infringe Oracle patents with Android

.
No wonder Microsoft is on a downward spiral....

there is no logical reason for them trying to introduce movie footage as prior art. I can't believe they even tried.

http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/2/3215953/samsung-2001-uk-television-show-dispute-apple-ipad-patents

In an order today, Koh rejected Samsung's arguments that it should be able to introduce footage from 2001: A Space Odyssey and the UK television show Tomorrow People, both of which feature characters using tablet devices, as "prior art": pre-existing creations the would call into question the originality and validity of Apple's design patents.

Regardless of which came first (personally, I think it was a case of parallel, concurrent development and that neither side copied the other for those two devices) I think Samsung is playing up the F700 a lot because they want to win in the court of public opinion, not because the F700 actually matters. This controversy is good for them, both in terms of PR and in terms of helping to establish cause for a mistrial, possibly.

If you take an actual look at the F700, you'll see that it's nothing like the iPhone at all. The primary picture floating around is as staged as the much-lambasted images that Apple used to "show" that Samsung devices looked similar to the iPhone and iPad. The F700 was a dumbphone with a slider keyboard and a vastly different UI (the UI shown in the images floating around is not the primary one).

Even if the F700 was admissible (which it shouldn't be, since Samsung's lawyers tried to play fast-and-loose with the rules and got burned), I don't think it would be a big deal in the case, since it doesn't demonstrate the vast majority of the features discussed in the design patents (e.g. the bezel isn't what's described in the design patent, the glass isn't what's described, the icons aren't what's described, the indicators in the UI aren't what's described), which would need to be present to establish prior art by demonstrating that Samsung had had those ideas before the iPhone.

Okay.

1. someone on Samsung's legal team screwed up and didn't include the evidence in discovery
2. the Samsung attorneys realized the screw up and are now trying to make a silk purse from a sow's ear
3. the evidence is actually quite weak (See this excellent takedown of how the F700 is not much like the iPhone at all.)
4. by releasing the evidence in a press release, the attorney is trying to manipulate the judge, not get a fair outcome.

Combined with the evidence destruction by Samsung, they've really been screwing this one up.

Finally, a use for these Japanese robots.

Android Handhelds and related:
http://obscurehandhelds.wordpress.com/
http://www.theverge.com/2012/6/8/3072142/power-a-moga-controller-hands-on
http://www.engadget.com/2009/12/11/odroid-the-android-gaming-handheld-now-shipping-to-android-gam/
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/04/android-gaming-tablet-looks-remarkably-similar-to-sony-psp/
http://arpandeb.com/02/2012/gadget-preview/3-handheld-android-gaming-tablet-consoles-review.html

Android dominance:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10797_3-57448990-235/gaming-handhelds-relegated-to-niche-status-by-ios-android/
http://www.phonearena.com/news/Nintendo-claims-the-iPhone-killed-the-handheld-game-console_id29533/

Yes.

Illiterate, much?

One of Apple's designers did a mockup of what they thought a Sony smartphone with the capabilities of the iPhone would look like, sporting circa-1983 Sony design cues:

http://www.theverge.com/2012/7/26/3189297/sony-inspired-iphone-design-images#3597459

It's a great riff on Sony's once iconic sense of design, now apparently long forgotten by the parent company.

Note that Apple couldn't have been "steeling" the iPhone's design from Sony, because the morons running Sony in 2005 had no products like the iPhone and, indeed, virtually nothing made by the company at that point utilized design cues from the company's 1980's heyday. Which is probably one of the reasons why Sony is circling the drain.

Also note that the final design of the iPhone looked nothing like those Sony-inspired prototypes. Everything from the shape to the buttons and switches was different. The iPhone actually ended up looking a lot more like something Rams would have designed for Braun (just as the iPod before it had).

Jobs never made it a secret he admired the '50s and '60s designs of Braun's Dieter Rams and Sony's Rams-inspired designs from the '70s and '80s. I think most people with a bit of taste probably do.

Scan the eyeball it has a deep 3d structure that is unique: opps,
Researchers create synthetic iris that can defeat eye-scanning security systems:
http://www.theverge.com/2012/7/26/3188518/synthetic-iris-scanning-security.

See all the ways to cheat on drug piss tests ....

If it is a system, it can be hacked. No system should ever take validation as 100% proof.

'We think biometrics is something that can be actually used by the people and it becomes their technology that they use to protect themselves.'"
This from the banking system that brought us 4 digit PIN codes that were considered perfect validation. *sigh*

Amazon has already rolled out a $52 million plan to install air conditioning at their warehouses.

WebOS didn't have "some technical problems", it used entirely the wrong paradigm. And by the time it came out, Palm was already dead.

Your revisionist history does not agree with the facts. The Palm Pre, running WebOS was released June 2009 for Sprint to strong favorable reviews. Bugs in the initial release were promptly dealt with by updates. A second model, the Pre Plus, also running WebOS, in January 2010 for Verizon and AT&T. During this period of time, the company continued to attract investments, so it was solvent and perceived as promising by investors. Verizon placed a huge order. Version 2.0 of the OS was ready to go. Every account agrees on one thing: what killed Palm was the invasion of the Droid i-clones. Cheap, rushed to market with little development time (because manufacturers simply layered an imitation of the already market-tested Apple user interface on top of the existing Android code base), the droids "sucked the air out of the room." Verizon backed out of the deal, and as a result, Palm ran out of money.

So I think that it is pretty clear that Palm's death (and probably the impending death of Blackberry) was due to Apple's inability to protect its design from imitation. And the net result of the failure of the law to protect Apple's distinctive product design is that consumers are left with a much more limited range of choices, which basically boil down to iPhones and i-clones.

And if WebOS had been a success, Apple would have sued Palm into oblivion.

Yeah, right. Apple hasn't sued anyone into oblivion. They've managed to slow down the introduction of a few of the most blatant imitators, and they've managed to push a few competitors into working around a few distinctive features, but there is no evidence that Apple's legal action have had more than a modest effect on sales of competitors--most of which still look and act very much like an iPhone. The diversity in the smartphone market that existed before the droid i-clones arrived, with both Blackberry and Palm actively pursuing distinctively different approaches, has vanished, with Microsoft now offering the only surviving alternative to Apple's vision of portable computing.

I'd say that overall, the story of Apple and and its competitors in the phone market provides powerful evidence that stronger protection of overall look-and-feel, as opposed to individual features, would provide great benefits, forcing manufacturers to develop their own individual styles, and increasing diversity and choices available to consumers.

They are doing you a favor with all the excess packaging, given they didn't bother tightening the screws holding the screens in place. http://www.theverge.com/2012/7/18/3168065/nexus-7-suffering-screen-separation-untightened-screws

2 gig of RAM to type a letter

This.

Came here to say the same thing. Seriously M$? Need the latest OS and 2gb RAM? What, no Nvidia AMD Radeon 1200 pixel shaders? How many cores do I need?

And what exactly does this do that the old Office 2010 doesn't do? Oh I can create a doc on my PC and edit it on my phone? I can do that now. Edit PDFs? Um.... great? Why is Windows 7 required for that? Embed videos? In a Word DOCUMENT? Check the weather in Outlook? Ok now you're just getting ridiculous.

2 gig of RAM to type a letter

This.

Came here to say the same thing. Seriously M$? Need the latest OS and 2gb RAM? What, no Nvidia AMD Radeon 1200 pixel shaders? How many cores do I need?

And what exactly does this do that the old Office 2010 doesn't do? Oh I can create a doc on my PC and edit it on my phone? I can do that now. Edit PDFs? Um.... great? Why is Windows 7 required for that? Embed videos? In a Word DOCUMENT? Check the weather in Outlook? Ok now you're just getting ridiculous.

2 gig of RAM to type a letter

This.

Came here to say the same thing. Seriously M$? Need the latest OS and 2gb RAM? What, no Nvidia AMD Radeon 1200 pixel shaders? How many cores do I need?

And what exactly does this do that the old Office 2010 doesn't do? Oh I can create a doc on my PC and edit it on my phone? I can do that now. Edit PDFs? Um.... great? Why is Windows 7 required for that? Embed videos? In a Word DOCUMENT? Check the weather in Outlook? Ok now you're just getting ridiculous.

2 gig of RAM to type a letter

This.

Came here to say the same thing. Seriously M$? Need the latest OS and 2gb RAM? What, no Nvidia AMD Radeon 1200 pixel shaders? How many cores do I need?

And what exactly does this do that the old Office 2010 doesn't do? Oh I can create a doc on my PC and edit it on my phone? I can do that now. Edit PDFs? Um.... great? Why is Windows 7 required for that? Embed videos? In a Word DOCUMENT? Check the weather in Outlook? Ok now you're just getting ridiculous.

On a tablet. I'd be pretty satisfied if something like that were freely available.

There will be plenty of such devices to choose from once Win8 comes out - of course, you'd want the x86 ones. Disable secure boot in UEFI, and install whatever you want on it. I'd specifically look out for Asus Tablet 810 if you want something closer to iPad in size & weight (and battery power, hopefully - though that also depends on OS).

To me, at least in this one narrow area, that all renders EPEAT's assessment obsolete, since it's failed to keep up with the times. It needs some way to account for such programs.

I want to make one thing clear:

Recycling is not the only issue.

EPEAT evaluates how much a given product impacts the environment, taking into account its recyclability, upgradeability, manufacturing processes, and energy consumption. Apple had previously touted EPEAT certification as a high point, with the company's most recent iMacs having received the organization's highest rating, EPEAT Gold.

Apple pulls its products from EPEAT 'green' certification registry

Since I submitted this story, CNET has embedded a link to its video review of the Mac Book Retina. It is a beautiful machine. But it cannot be serviced or upgraded in any meaningful way.

Boom another major blow to Samsung and Android Tuesday and then the ruling specifically addresses any Geek's desire for a 'pure Android' to boot.

This could not get any more specific than Tuesday's Judgements. Here are some of them...

"The record contains evidence that, while Apples U.S. market share in unit shipments may have continued to grow from the third to fourth quarters of 2011, even after release of the Galaxy Nexus on December 15, 2011, Apples U.S. market share fell by several percentage points in the first quarter of 2012 i.e., the three months after the Galaxy Nexus was released while Samsungs U.S. market share grew by roughly the same percentage points," the order read.

"The Court found that Apple had shown a clear likelihood that Samsung has and will continue to take market share from Apple, and moreover that it is doing so with a product that likely infringes for of Apple's likely valid patents." ...

Though Samsung attempted to block the injunction with its own argument that it would suffer irreparable harm, the court was not sympathetic to the line of reasoning. "The harms identified by Samsung in the coming weeks or months are no more than the expected harms that accompany any enjoined business" ...

Here is proof Judge Koh clearly knows how to think and reason...

"Furthermore, Samsungs very argument at the hearing that it would be irreparably harmed by lost Galaxy Nexus sales to Apple, due to the strength of Apples platform stickiness and brand loyalty among its customers, undermines the position it has maintained during this litigation that
Galaxy Nexus customers are unlikely to buy Apple products in Samsungs stead. Samsungs argument instead supports Apples position that the Galaxy Nexus is taking sales away from Apple." ...

And the one that startled me the most as quoted from the blog AppleInsider...

"Samsung also made an absurd argument that a sales ban of the Galaxy Nexus would harm "certain "techie" consumers who value the pure Android operating system and who will be unable to find any close substitute within the same price point." The court summarily dismissed the claim, citing Samsung's own frequent assertion that it sells more than one smartphone."

--

There are plenty of cheap older Androids to choose from!

The Injunction against Samsung now stands and is in full effect. ...

Sources
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/12/07/03/court_denies_samsungs_motion_to_stay_galaxy_nexus_injunction.html
and
http://www.theverge.com/2012/7/3/3136023/samsung-request-stay-galaxy-nexus-injunction-denied-Apple

Some real facts would've been nice, rather than a baseless implication.

Google spent over $5 million in lobbying in Q1 2012 alone. Microsoft spent $1.72M, Facebook $0.65M.

Where is Apple? They spent a mere $0.5M, one-tenth what Google did. Dell, Intel, Amazon, Oracle, IBM, HP all outspent Apple. And unlike Facebook, Google and Microsoft, Apple has no political action committee.

It's true that Google lobbied for some worthwhile things like campaigning against SOPA, but if the amount of lobbying dollars are the measure by which you're predicting Apple wins in the court, you are way off base.

In fact it's exactly the opposite:

"I never once had a meeting with anybody representing Apple," said Jeff Miller, who served as a senior aide on the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Antitrust Subcommittee for eight years. "There have been other tech companies who chose not to engage in Washington, and for the most part that strategy did not benefit them."

Then on page 2 of article:

“There’s a difference between being quiet and uncooperative,” said a congressional aide who has dealt with Apple. “Part of the problem being behind the scenes is they have no identity. They have no corporate identity in this town because nobody knows them.”
[...]
And in the corridors of Congress, Apple has become a punching bag for lawmakers who understand the power of using a marquee name to reinforce their arguments about American companies dodging taxes, hiring overseas and mistreating foreign workers.

If lobbying dollars make the courts see things their way, as you imply, Apple should be losing every court case on home soil.

That's not what's happening here. Proview is in bankruptcy... and was seeking a windfall to save the company. Apple was generous to even go to court with them. Had Apple waited another year, maybe Proview would be no more, and Apple could have used the name in the Chinese market without dispute. Here, FWIW, is their product. The Proview iPAD is not a tablet computer but a 800x600px 15" CRT-based 256Mhz AIO Linux desktop w/ 32MB RAM and a 16GB HDD... maybe its just me but I think it looks all too familiar. At any rate, I don't think Apple's iPad was competing with it nor putting their sales at risk. Hopefully this sheckle Apple has thrown to Proview allows them to restructure and stay in business.

The only reason such a thing doesn't happen is because patent and trademark issues are taken care of before launching unlike computers where they pretty much do what they want and hope for the best.

You should read up on the history of the automobile.

And I suspect you'll find most of the crap people such as yourself spew about what Apple stole isn't exactly true. For example, Apple paid Xerox in exchange for them sharing.

You're missing the point. Whether Apple paid something or not, the fact is that Apple managed to kill research at most of the companies it copied from, without actually innovating themselves.

Just like their design patents don't patent rounded corners or rectangles but the truth doesn't always suit Android fanboys.

Apple switches their claims against competitors between trademarks, patents, and design patents. And what Apple thinks they own, they have shown in their legal briefs: http://www.theverge.com/2011/12/2/2596527/apple-samsung-design-patent-iphone-ipad-work-around

Here's a better article: http://www.theverge.com/2012/2/11/2791830/apple-seeks-ban-on-Samsung-Galaxy-Nexus

• US Patent No. 5,946,647 - this patent was filed in 1996 (issued 1999) and covers detecting data, such as a phone number, in an email or web page, creating a link to that data,
  and initiating an action like calling the phone number when the user selects the link. The data could also include addresses, dates, etc.
• US Patent No. 8,086,604 - this patent claims priority back to 2000 (issued Dec. 2011) and covers searching multiple sources of information (on device and elsewhere) through
  a single search interface, such as Siri. Apple specifically touts Siri in its injunction request, but also argues that a unified text search is covered by the patent as well.
• US Patent No. 8,046,721 - this patent claims priority back to 2005 (issued Oct. 2011) and covers Apple's signature slide-to-unlock feature. While Apple already has patent coverage
  on an image unlock feature, this newest patent is obviously intended to be a bit broader — likely addressing potential workarounds implemented by Google and OEMs over the last couple of years.
• US Patent No. 8,074,172 - this patent was filed in 2007 (issued Dec. 2011) and covers providing word suggestions while the user types on a touchscreen keyboard, where the
  suggestions can be accepted or rejected by the user.

Two cellphone manufacturers enter!

RIM takes one on the chin, and is down for the count!

Google, Samsung, and Android just took a bunch of horrible hits.

The import and sale of the Google flag ship Nexus released Monday has just been banned in the USA by court order obtained by Apple a few hours ago.
http://gigaom.com/apple/apple-gets-another-injunction-this-time-on-samsungs-galaxy-nexus/

Google's strategy of buying Motorola to protect Android using FRAND has been hit hard after six key congressmen visited the FTC Thursday and warned them FRAND ABUSE will not be tolerated in the USA either. Don't you just love an election year?

http://www.theverge.com/2012/6/7/3071117/ftc-standards-related-patents-can-cause-substantial-harm-when-used-to

Then Google has been hit hard by Apple dropping Google maps from Apple mobile this fall. Google looses map revenue and market share while Google is forced to dump large sums into new map display technology to try to convince mobile users Google maps are better.

http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2012/06/google_maps_can_apple_dominate_mapping_by_kicking_google_off_the_iphone_.html

Is it really true you can loose your voice if you excessively scream in anger and pain?

For those experienced with android it tells you something:

Nexus = owned by google = apple equivalent experience = things will work right.

Buying non-nexus products = responsibilities on the shoulders of either the mfr or the carrier if it's a phone = shoddy experience = things are broken and will not be fixed.

But things went horribly wrong for Google a few hours ago.
The new Google Android flagship Nexus that was just released Monday has been banned in the USA by an emergency court injunction obtained by Apple.

http://gigaom.com/apple/apple-gets-another-injunction-this-time-on-samsungs-galaxy-nexus/

To make matters worse for Google and Motorola six key senators just visited the FTC and warned them they were watching how the FTC dealt with accusations of FRAND abuse (read Google/Motorola vs Apple). Don't you just love an election year?

http://www.theverge.com/2012/6/7/3071117/ftc-standards-related-patents-can-cause-substantial-harm-when-used-to

Be careful.
Can anyone really loose their voice by excessive screaming in anger and pain?

Wait, you are claiming that the post is not valid because in-house lawyers don't generally do the litigation? You state yourself that outside firms normally handle that litigation. This points at the post being more correct, not less correct based on that fact. An outside firm has to worry about their jobs, so of course prolong cases to increase revenue when possible. At the same time, I'm sure that businesses are shown over and over how companyA won a million dollars from companyB, and using case law think they can win.. even in cases like SCO vs. IBM.

The whole idea patent bullshit needs to be reverted and removed from the system. Let's all just call it a social experiment that went totally wrong and be done already. It has broken the patent system as to be nothing but a big joke to everyone except a few select law firms and companies that make money trolling on patents, and of course those with enough capital to staff law firms and patent writers.

Nobody want's to innovate in this environment for fear of being sued into Chinese rice farmer poverty. Hell, look at the innovation rewards Nest is getting thanks to Honeywell. In case you are not familiar here is an article. The opinions expressed against Honeywell don't take away the lawsuit, the C&D orders, the lost revenue, etc.. etc...

" I was referring to the level of loyalty of their fan-base, and the rapidness of their hardcore to upgrade."

They have fans because they make great products and they support those products. A iPhone that runs next year's iOS 6 is only 99 cents.

Cheap and runs next year's OS? Yes please. Oh wait, no 4.8" OMGLOL screen. Nevermind, because, you know, I buy phones for the hardware, not because it runs the all the apps I want now and next year.

Why would you limit the max res like that?

to make us buy windows phone 9 supporting HD in 2013/14... which probably won't work on current windows phone 8 devices.

Sorry M$, everything was good until " Windows Phone 8 won't be coming to current Windows Phone devices". A 2009 iPhone runs 2012 iOS 5.1.1, and I have to tell you it's been pretty nice not having to throw away my phone every time a new OS comes out and being able to download the "latest and greatest" apps because everything new works on my old phone. After all, it's a phone first, not a PC, I don't like the idea of having to throw out my phone with all my contacts and info and all the cases and chargers and everything I've spent supporting it. I don't mind the constant upgrades on a PC, that's the nature of the beast, but I don't want to go through the same mess with my phone. Oh, and my 2009 iPhone will support 2013 iOS 6. Wow, say what you want about Apple, but sometimes they just get it.

app pulled

I am pretty sure that Apple has so much stated in the past that if it competes with one of their products they could pull it. I should go look at the guidelines now to check up on it.

Fail: http://www.theverge.com/2012/4/19/2958555/alienware-m11x-no-2012-refresh-discontinued

Apple fans love that version of events but it just isn't so.

And Android fans (or at least you) apparently love to ignore relevant data when arguing that something came first, since every single piece of evidence you just cited postdates the iPhone announcement by a minimum of 10 months.

There are plentiful examples of what Android looked like and how it worked in the early days. Hell, some UI designs dated May 2007 were released on The Verge just a few months ago after they came to light in the Oracle v. Google suit. The one thing ALL of the evidence has in common is that not a single piece of it has demonstrated that they were designing with touch in mind prior to the iPhone announcement in January 2007.

At some point in 2007 after the announcement they did indeed start working in parallel on the touch stuff, but I challenge you to find any evidence that they were doing so prior to January 2007. You won't find it.

Asus Padfone might fit your description:

http://www.theverge.com/2012/6/6/3064317/asus-padfone-review

Considering that LinkedIn was storing the passwords unsalted, it's really not much better than plaintext.

The only question at this point is whether their "security" team suffers from mild, or severe learning disabilities.

Nintendo reports first-ever operating loss in 2011
http://www.engadget.com/2012/04/26/nintendo-annual-financials-2011/

Sony reports record loss in 2011
http://www.theverge.com/2012/5/10/3011264/sony-record-loss-5-7-billion-fy-2011

Apple reports record revenue, record sales of iPad and iPhone in 2011
http://www.macworld.com/article/1164973/apple_reports_record_revenue_profit_for_fiscal_first_quarter.html

But I'm sure that's just a coincidence.

Well an unlocked boot loader might be what you need since Moto isn't going to update the DROID 2 or X2, well unless google changes that.
http://www.theverge.com/2012/5/21/3033966/motorola-android-ice-cream-sandwich-upgrade-statement

If only there was an article somewhere that described how they made the image...

The image certainly looks different than what we're used to seeing, and that's because the camera aboard the weather satellite combines data from three visible and one infrared wavelengths of light, a method that turns vegetation into the rust color that dominates the shot.

This article uses 4G to refer to IMT-Advanced (International Mobile Telecommunications Advanced), as defined by ITU-R. An IMT-Advanced cellular system must fulfill the following requirements:[5]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4G

Unfortunately, the real meaning cannot be legally enforced, so unscrupulous vendors (like Apple) are trying to redefine it to include 3G variants.
http://www.theverge.com/2012/4/19/2961199/apple-redefinition-4g-australia-ipad

Please don't tell Neil deGrasse Tyson about this or he will kill baby Vesta safe just like he killed its older sibling Pluto. This man is worse than the Pharaoh!

Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson on killing Pluto: 'All I did was drive the getaway car'
http://www.theverge.com/2012/3/26/2903224/dr-neil-degrasse-tyson-killing-pluto-on-the-verge

The advantage of these ventures is that they're outside national jurisdiction. The problem with these ventures is that they're outside national jurisdiction - and for almost every company out there, they benefit from the protection of a country's laws more than they suffer from them.

Sealand failed because anyone who hosted data there was wide open to the whim of Roy Bates - and if you didn't like his whim, you had no recourse. This will be no different.

A good article on Sealand: http://www.theverge.com/2012/3/28/2909303/sealand-havenco-doomed-data-haven-history

If you outright bought the boat, the only whim would be your own. Of course, true pirates could also come back to the high seas.

The advantage of these ventures is that they're outside national jurisdiction. The problem with these ventures is that they're outside national jurisdiction - and for almost every company out there, they benefit from the protection of a country's laws more than they suffer from them.

Sealand failed because anyone who hosted data there was wide open to the whim of Roy Bates - and if you didn't like his whim, you had no recourse. This will be no different.

A good article on Sealand: http://www.theverge.com/2012/3/28/2909303/sealand-havenco-doomed-data-haven-history

A partial verdict may have been reached!

Owners of HTC’s highly-praised HD2 touchscreen smartphone will be unable to upgrade the device to Microsoft’s new Windows Phone 7 software when the OS is released towards the end of the year. Despite the HD2 meeting many of the criteria laid down in Microsoft’s ‘Chassis 1’ spec – including a 1GHz Qualcomm processor, high-res capacitive touch display, 5 megapixel camera and 3.5mm headphone jack – the phone will be ruled out for the simple reason that it has five buttons instead of the three mandated for all Windows Phone 7 devices.

Source.

Here are links to some of the sources saying the same thing is going to happen to current Win Phone 7 device owners:

The Verge

Mary Jo Foley

Ars Technica

"a close and careful reading reveals that Google's terms are pretty much the same as anyone else's, and slightly better in some cases"

http://www.theverge.com/2012/4/25/2973849/google-drive-terms-privacy-data-skydrive-dropbox-icloud

Ya know, maybe they don't "invent" things. Whatever. One can say for sure that most of the industry tends to copy Apple's, er, um, 'not inventions'. What did smartphones look like before the iPhone?

Talking 'bout Android prototypes: http://www.theverge.com/2012/4/25/2974676/this-was-the-original-google-phone-presented-in-2006 "The baseline specs required two soft menu keys, indicating that touchscreens weren't really in the plan at all"