If I want local news, I'm going to the specific website of a local news outlet that I already know of.
If I want national news that the local site may not cover, I'm going to a specific national news website (or a Few to get alternate views).
If I want to research a specific current event topic and get as many relevant alternate sources as I can, I'm going to Google AND DuckDuckGo.
If I don't see a snippet of an article in the search results that gives an inkling that it contains information relevant to what I want to know about, I'm not going to bother with the link. It's that simple, and that's what's going to cause these outlets to shoot themselves in the foot.
It's not about denying the players access to the source code or pirating the game through that channel. It's DRM designed to control where/when/if the users can post their game play videos.
Cool story bro. U mad? Just because you're PC nobility and have to miss out on all the content your Multi-Platform Kings and Queens gets to enjoy at their beck and call, you think you have to shit on the Console Knights and Mobile peasants? Know your role and shut your mouth.
To commemorate this momentous occasion I suggest we play Green Day's "Wake me up when September Ends" with a Followup of a retelling of the classic tale "Rip Van Winkle"... Whadayamean I'm 2 years too soon? What the hell is a year? The current day is Tue Sep 8393 1993, isn't it?
My municipality only seems to have tubes long enough to span one lane. I suppose it's a budget cutting measure, but I've only ever seen them do the traffic speed/volume checks where the roads only have one lane in each direction. Could also be that the areas with more than one lane (each dir) have speed limits too high for the tubes to stay put (55-65mph).
I can (and have) build a Xenon Server that's extremely quiet and awesomely powerful for about $2700-$2800. That's with Dual Xenon Hex-cores, 64 GB RAM with ECC, 128 GB SSD, and 12 TB of HDD space (before applying RAID). Off of that one physical server, I can easily run 10 separate virtual servers (2 of which I have mimicking a Mainframe through the use of Hercules for the High Volume Data churn that MVS can handle) allowing me to have in-house access to development, testing, and model environments before I publish anything to a cheap VPS for "production". If the VPS goes bust, I'll usually have a backup option set to go live at a moments notice...again, another cheap VPS instance. And when I say cheap VPS: AWS, Azure, and Google compute are all ripoffs for what I need a VPS for. I could get away with a simple hosting account except for the fact that I demand more control, and with a VPS I can have unlimited local *SQL databases provided I've enough space provisioned, where as with a Webhost I'm usually limited to 5 on average.
As far as the monthly cost of running that Server...my summer electric bill has risen $50 because of it. The winter bill has actually gone down $30 against the average since I don't have to heat the house as much. The VPS on the other hand, if the cost of running it increases above $15/mo I'm shopping around for cheaper rates. Over the long term it's cheaper to keep your high end compute in-house and only use an external VPS as a disposable public facing front-end.
Over the course of a lifetime, $1,000,000 is the equivalence of less than 20 years on the average American income (~$52K according to the 2014 census). If you had that much all at once with a steady stream of your normal income and wise investing, sure...you'll get ahead...but if that's all you had to live on for the rest of your life, you're not getting ahead of anyone. So...to live in America, yes, people do need a million dollars.
If you turn off the maple syrup, most of us aren't even going to notice. 90% of the "maple" syrup we have on our shelves is High Fructose Corn Syrup with maple flavoring... even the high priced "Real" stuff. I think the only place in the US that might get pissed about a maple syrup shortage might be Southern New England/New York. Northern New England would love it though.
It's easy to default on student loans; it's quite difficult to have student loans discharged under bankruptcy, but not impossible. Best bet is consult with an actual bankruptcy attorney about what chapter and under what conditions your student loans can be discharged. Most attorneys will consult for free.
And when I'm not spinning a 1080 or two up to play Witcher 3 in 4K, I can tell Blender to use the CUDAs to render a 4K scene for a few hours. Or I can use those CUDAs to do amateur weather modeling... or hobbyist genome mapping. Couple those with a Tesla 1070s and you've got a nice huge data pipe to parallel blast a few billion pixels and ints all over the place....at the same time I heat my house. I can't wait to turn my computer into a fission reactor using SLI!
You use Linux and you don't even know it. No, it's not powering your desktop, but UNIX/Linux is powering a very large portion of the internet. And if you bank on the internet, or manage insurance policies over the net, or take part in online investing, you're likely using IBM system/390 or z/OS mainframes to handle your transactions. I'm a professional.NET coder, which means at work I have to use various Microsoft provided tools for my job. At home, I only run a Windows machine for 2 reasons:
1) To be able to remote into my system at work using the VPN when I'm on-call.
2) For PC Gaming.
The rest of the time I'm using Linux, because it's what I know better and can do more work with it in less time.
People don't choose Windows or Mac because they're operating systems that work. People choose Windows or Mac because it's what they know, and the Devil you know is always better than the Angel you don't. If you were able to put the time and effort into learning the depths of administering a UNIX or UNIX-like OS you'd be able to tell quite quickly just how broken Windows really is, and similarly just how confining OS X can be. Again, I'm not saying you need to do this, because until you can get deep under the hood with a good concept of what you're doing, you're always going to be more productive with what you have worked with more since you know generally what you can expect out of it(again, the Devil you know vs. the Angel you don't).
You deride Linux for not "getting work done" when it's really just you don't want to spend the time to install it and use it (which is kinda sad considering that several mainline distributions are as difficult to install as clicking on a checkbox indicating your keyboard layout, selecting your time zone, and selecting from a list which productivity and development applications you want, and then clicking the install button and letting it go for 20 minutes with the final result being in a system that just works for your system; I've had to do a lot more than that on any Windows system I've installed). You're actually rather lucky that you have such "easy" operating systems to work with now to "get work done." When I first had a job where I worked with computers in order to "get work done" I had to write out JCL scripts to send to a Mainframe operator who manually scheduled my job to run, which amounted to taking a comma space delimited text file created by a data entry program and running an SQL insert statement against the entries to put them into the database (at that time I didn't know or care what DB system the office used). If I had started that job a year earlier (1995 instead of 1996) I would have been punching up that same JCL by hand on cards. Each card having one line of code that was at max 80 characters long. Compared to that, compiling and installing Linux from scratch was an absolute breeze. Granted most of the cards could be re-used as it was only 6 separate lines of the JCL that had to be changed for each job, but I'd hate to be the guy doing that punching. They used a single square hole punch for that purpose since that was cheaper and saved more space than paying for the punch machine that was basically a type writer that took up half of your average bathroom. After working there, compiling a complete Linux install from scratch was an absolute breeze.
Now get off my lawn and STFU about shit you don't know and refuse to understand, hipster shit-tard. (If you "have a life", WTF are you doing here?)
It's Microsoft's customized "404: Not Found" Error page.. So yes, technically the link works in that Microsoft responds to it, but they're responding with errors in a way that obfuscates the fact that they're errors (much like a great many things from Microsoft). Viewing the link with an application like Fiddler2 or Postman you can clearly see that it's returning the 404 status instead of a 200.
A few years ago I noticed that I was getting a lot of headaches from eyestrain due to looking at computer monitors all day. I was flipping through some electronics magazine and noticed an add for special gaming glasses for FPS "sports". $200 for non-prescription tinted glasses. I thought of trying those, but not for $200 down. Fast forward 3 months and I'm due for getting new glasses and I find that my ophthalmologist's office is having a buy one pair, get a second pair free sale. Thinking back to the ad I asked him if I can have the second pair an adjusted prescription with a yellow tint akin to my Yellow #8 camera filters. The adjusted prescription gives me optimum clarity at between 1-3 feet in front of me (about the same as readers), and the yellow tint blocks out enough of the blue light that I don't get any headaches anymore. If I had to pay full price for the second pair, the tint was only going to add $20 on top of the normal prescription lens price (for me with all the additional options I usually get like anti-scratch, polycarbonate, etc is roughly about $200-300).
tl;dr version: There's definitely something to blue blocking to reducing the effects of looking at a computer screen, but it shouldn't raise the price of your normal lenses by any significant amount.
Yeah, he really needs to get up with the times. 80 Character punch cards are wh ere real programmers get jobs done. Hell, I'd write this post in COBOL but Slash dot would block it saying that I'm yelling.
Unfortunately I can't justify driving 70+ MPH for 2.5 hrs for a theater experience only marginally better than all the theaters locally and costing near twice as much. The only benefit is that the theater is kept to a (slightly) higher standard of clean, and the folding chairs are newer and have a bit more stuffing. If it had overstuffed leather recliners with cup-holders, plenty of foot room, a meal with the movie, intermission if the movie is longer than 1hr30 minutes to allow for bathroom breaks, and full on sanitation crews that operate for an hour between each showing before letting the next group in, it would be worth the extra drive. Since that doesn't exist within a reasonable distance, I'll have my own in-home THX built theater system installed and happily play PC and Console games on it as I await Screening Room.
I've always thought that what they should have done was let the bulk of the processing be done by the user's phone and just have enough hardware to drive a mountable HUD, helmet audio, and rear view camera system that's mostly helmet independent and driven by Bluetooth. I have a Sena bluetooth unit on my helmet that I use to be able to take calls and get GPS nav audio from my phone while on my bike. It mounts to the side of the helmet in the seam between the foam layer and the shell. If you're not claustrophobic I'd recommend getting a full face helm with a wind guard on the chin to cut back on road noise affecting the mic. A similar unit could be had that might be a bit bigger to allow local camera pass-through from the camera on the back of the helmet to a mini projector that puts an image on the visor (might need some type of film to stick on the inside of the visor to be able to react to the projection...kinda like the HUD system that gets displayed on the windshield of some cars). Maybe have a local slot for removable SD storage for video caught by the helmet camera(s) while riding.
The key to this was really in the tech they could have provided; not by going the route they did and stuff everything into the helmet and selling it as a contained unit. I always hated the style of that damn helmet they designed.
Square-Enix has had the right idea IMO. They are reselling their old Franchises (ie Final Fantasy 1 - 6) on the Android market for $15 a pop, and people are paying it because these are quality ports. Granted FF 2, 3 and 5 never made it to the US in their original form (the US's FF 2 and FF 3 were Japan's FF 4 and FF 6 respectively) so that increases the value a bit; but S-E has actually gone through to update the UI to work with the touch interfaces natively, along with BT controllers that can connect to the phone/tab, cross device cloud saving in addition to local storage saves (so I can take a game I'm playing on my phone, throw the save to their cloud, and then download resume it on my Shield connected to the big screen...and vice versa), and improved the graphics to look good on newer hardware.
If I had the option to play an updated version of the original Legend of Zelda that has a great UI to match the device type it's being played on, updated graphics (maybe using 3D models instead of sprites, a la "Tiny Keep"), multiple device compatibility with cloud saves, etc... I'd be more than happy to slap down $15-$20 on it. Hell, given that most Android devices have some kind of Mic system, they could even give an update based on the Famicom version where you could actually shout down a room full of Pols Voice instead of using up arrows to one hit kill them (warning...that was a spoiler. sorry).
My point is, people have already shown Nintendo that there's an interest in (re)purchasing 20-30 year old games to play on their new TVs and 3DS using the Wii(U)'s and 3DS' Virtual Console system for $5 - $10 a pop. Square-Enix and a few other companies of the classic console era have also shown that there's an interest in playing older titles with updated experiences. I'm not saying that Nintendo can afford to become exclusively an Android developer (Square-Enix, SEGA, EA, etc still have their bigger budget console and PC offerings going on), but I think they are missing out on a very large market by not going forward with expanding into mobile development at least for their older titles/franchises.
Besides...have you played those free Android games? You get what you pay for is no less true in the Android ecosystem. (Hint: games that are free to download but you have to pay real money for items, boosters, and upgrades to be able to get a decent playing advantage are not free [Pokemon])
Hell, it might even blow the doors off running 3 or 4 copies of Crysis at once without breaking much of a sweat, technical configuration of the overall system notwithstanding to permit such horsefuckery.
So there's a hard 100% certainty that businesses did not in any way ever take into account Blackberry's track record of giving up data to any government entities without hesitation or resistance? Even if a company used that as.001% of the reason for abandoning Blackberry, and employee lack of enthusiasm over BB was 99.999%, it still makes the GGP's point true: It's still a part of the reason for Blackberry's decline, and probably a much bigger part than the hypothetical.001% that I used here. Also, what's to say that BB's data retention and sharing policies aren't a good part of why users have started ditching BB for the other platforms. Sure...usability, apps, and design decisions were probably a greater part of the reason, but I'm sure BB's stance on data didn't help matters. And if it was at all a part of the users' decision to abandon, by extension it becomes a part of the reason for corporate abandonment of the platform, even if they don't directly realize it.
Slashdot Mirror
If I want local news, I'm going to the specific website of a local news outlet that I already know of.
If I want national news that the local site may not cover, I'm going to a specific national news website (or a Few to get alternate views).
If I want to research a specific current event topic and get as many relevant alternate sources as I can, I'm going to Google AND DuckDuckGo.
If I don't see a snippet of an article in the search results that gives an inkling that it contains information relevant to what I want to know about, I'm not going to bother with the link. It's that simple, and that's what's going to cause these outlets to shoot themselves in the foot.
It's not about denying the players access to the source code or pirating the game through that channel. It's DRM designed to control where/when/if the users can post their game play videos.
Three words:
Digital
Rights
Massacre
Cool story bro. U mad? Just because you're PC nobility and have to miss out on all the content your Multi-Platform Kings and Queens gets to enjoy at their beck and call, you think you have to shit on the Console Knights and Mobile peasants? Know your role and shut your mouth.
To commemorate this momentous occasion I suggest we play Green Day's "Wake me up when September Ends" with a Followup of a retelling of the classic tale "Rip Van Winkle"... Whadayamean I'm 2 years too soon? What the hell is a year? The current day is Tue Sep 8393 1993, isn't it?
My municipality only seems to have tubes long enough to span one lane. I suppose it's a budget cutting measure, but I've only ever seen them do the traffic speed/volume checks where the roads only have one lane in each direction. Could also be that the areas with more than one lane (each dir) have speed limits too high for the tubes to stay put (55-65mph).
Considering that this is Linux and not organic immortals we're talking about...
I think it's less Highlander; more Mega Man.
I can (and have) build a Xenon Server that's extremely quiet and awesomely powerful for about $2700-$2800. That's with Dual Xenon Hex-cores, 64 GB RAM with ECC, 128 GB SSD, and 12 TB of HDD space (before applying RAID). Off of that one physical server, I can easily run 10 separate virtual servers (2 of which I have mimicking a Mainframe through the use of Hercules for the High Volume Data churn that MVS can handle) allowing me to have in-house access to development, testing, and model environments before I publish anything to a cheap VPS for "production". If the VPS goes bust, I'll usually have a backup option set to go live at a moments notice...again, another cheap VPS instance. And when I say cheap VPS: AWS, Azure, and Google compute are all ripoffs for what I need a VPS for. I could get away with a simple hosting account except for the fact that I demand more control, and with a VPS I can have unlimited local *SQL databases provided I've enough space provisioned, where as with a Webhost I'm usually limited to 5 on average.
As far as the monthly cost of running that Server...my summer electric bill has risen $50 because of it. The winter bill has actually gone down $30 against the average since I don't have to heat the house as much. The VPS on the other hand, if the cost of running it increases above $15/mo I'm shopping around for cheaper rates. Over the long term it's cheaper to keep your high end compute in-house and only use an external VPS as a disposable public facing front-end.
Over the course of a lifetime, $1,000,000 is the equivalence of less than 20 years on the average American income (~$52K according to the 2014 census). If you had that much all at once with a steady stream of your normal income and wise investing, sure...you'll get ahead...but if that's all you had to live on for the rest of your life, you're not getting ahead of anyone. So...to live in America, yes, people do need a million dollars.
There is nothing illegal about me checking my bank account or credit card accounts online either.
But I'll be damned if I have those account numbers and financial information running around in plain text between me and the bank.
If you turn off the maple syrup, most of us aren't even going to notice. 90% of the "maple" syrup we have on our shelves is High Fructose Corn Syrup with maple flavoring... even the high priced "Real" stuff. I think the only place in the US that might get pissed about a maple syrup shortage might be Southern New England/New York. Northern New England would love it though.
It's easy to default on student loans; it's quite difficult to have student loans discharged under bankruptcy, but not impossible. Best bet is consult with an actual bankruptcy attorney about what chapter and under what conditions your student loans can be discharged. Most attorneys will consult for free.
And when I'm not spinning a 1080 or two up to play Witcher 3 in 4K, I can tell Blender to use the CUDAs to render a 4K scene for a few hours. Or I can use those CUDAs to do amateur weather modeling... or hobbyist genome mapping. Couple those with a Tesla 1070s and you've got a nice huge data pipe to parallel blast a few billion pixels and ints all over the place....at the same time I heat my house. I can't wait to turn my computer into a fission reactor using SLI!
Tool for the job, man.
You use Linux and you don't even know it. No, it's not powering your desktop, but UNIX/Linux is powering a very large portion of the internet. And if you bank on the internet, or manage insurance policies over the net, or take part in online investing, you're likely using IBM system/390 or z/OS mainframes to handle your transactions. I'm a professional .NET coder, which means at work I have to use various Microsoft provided tools for my job. At home, I only run a Windows machine for 2 reasons:
The rest of the time I'm using Linux, because it's what I know better and can do more work with it in less time.
People don't choose Windows or Mac because they're operating systems that work. People choose Windows or Mac because it's what they know, and the Devil you know is always better than the Angel you don't. If you were able to put the time and effort into learning the depths of administering a UNIX or UNIX-like OS you'd be able to tell quite quickly just how broken Windows really is, and similarly just how confining OS X can be. Again, I'm not saying you need to do this, because until you can get deep under the hood with a good concept of what you're doing, you're always going to be more productive with what you have worked with more since you know generally what you can expect out of it(again, the Devil you know vs. the Angel you don't).
You deride Linux for not "getting work done" when it's really just you don't want to spend the time to install it and use it (which is kinda sad considering that several mainline distributions are as difficult to install as clicking on a checkbox indicating your keyboard layout, selecting your time zone, and selecting from a list which productivity and development applications you want, and then clicking the install button and letting it go for 20 minutes with the final result being in a system that just works for your system; I've had to do a lot more than that on any Windows system I've installed). You're actually rather lucky that you have such "easy" operating systems to work with now to "get work done." When I first had a job where I worked with computers in order to "get work done" I had to write out JCL scripts to send to a Mainframe operator who manually scheduled my job to run, which amounted to taking a comma space delimited text file created by a data entry program and running an SQL insert statement against the entries to put them into the database (at that time I didn't know or care what DB system the office used). If I had started that job a year earlier (1995 instead of 1996) I would have been punching up that same JCL by hand on cards. Each card having one line of code that was at max 80 characters long. Compared to that, compiling and installing Linux from scratch was an absolute breeze. Granted most of the cards could be re-used as it was only 6 separate lines of the JCL that had to be changed for each job, but I'd hate to be the guy doing that punching. They used a single square hole punch for that purpose since that was cheaper and saved more space than paying for the punch machine that was basically a type writer that took up half of your average bathroom. After working there, compiling a complete Linux install from scratch was an absolute breeze.
Now get off my lawn and STFU about shit you don't know and refuse to understand, hipster shit-tard. (If you "have a life", WTF are you doing here?)
It's Microsoft's customized "404: Not Found" Error page.. So yes, technically the link works in that Microsoft responds to it, but they're responding with errors in a way that obfuscates the fact that they're errors (much like a great many things from Microsoft). Viewing the link with an application like Fiddler2 or Postman you can clearly see that it's returning the 404 status instead of a 200.
Did you check that link before you posted it? I'm getting page not found errors on it. (kind of ironic)
A few years ago I noticed that I was getting a lot of headaches from eyestrain due to looking at computer monitors all day. I was flipping through some electronics magazine and noticed an add for special gaming glasses for FPS "sports". $200 for non-prescription tinted glasses. I thought of trying those, but not for $200 down. Fast forward 3 months and I'm due for getting new glasses and I find that my ophthalmologist's office is having a buy one pair, get a second pair free sale. Thinking back to the ad I asked him if I can have the second pair an adjusted prescription with a yellow tint akin to my Yellow #8 camera filters. The adjusted prescription gives me optimum clarity at between 1-3 feet in front of me (about the same as readers), and the yellow tint blocks out enough of the blue light that I don't get any headaches anymore. If I had to pay full price for the second pair, the tint was only going to add $20 on top of the normal prescription lens price (for me with all the additional options I usually get like anti-scratch, polycarbonate, etc is roughly about $200-300).
tl;dr version: There's definitely something to blue blocking to reducing the effects of looking at a computer screen, but it shouldn't raise the price of your normal lenses by any significant amount.
Awesome! I used to love frabs!
Yeah, he really needs to get up with the times. 80 Character punch cards are wh
ere real programmers get jobs done. Hell, I'd write this post in COBOL but Slash
dot would block it saying that I'm yelling.
Unfortunately I can't justify driving 70+ MPH for 2.5 hrs for a theater experience only marginally better than all the theaters locally and costing near twice as much. The only benefit is that the theater is kept to a (slightly) higher standard of clean, and the folding chairs are newer and have a bit more stuffing. If it had overstuffed leather recliners with cup-holders, plenty of foot room, a meal with the movie, intermission if the movie is longer than 1hr30 minutes to allow for bathroom breaks, and full on sanitation crews that operate for an hour between each showing before letting the next group in, it would be worth the extra drive. Since that doesn't exist within a reasonable distance, I'll have my own in-home THX built theater system installed and happily play PC and Console games on it as I await Screening Room.
I've always thought that what they should have done was let the bulk of the processing be done by the user's phone and just have enough hardware to drive a mountable HUD, helmet audio, and rear view camera system that's mostly helmet independent and driven by Bluetooth. I have a Sena bluetooth unit on my helmet that I use to be able to take calls and get GPS nav audio from my phone while on my bike. It mounts to the side of the helmet in the seam between the foam layer and the shell. If you're not claustrophobic I'd recommend getting a full face helm with a wind guard on the chin to cut back on road noise affecting the mic. A similar unit could be had that might be a bit bigger to allow local camera pass-through from the camera on the back of the helmet to a mini projector that puts an image on the visor (might need some type of film to stick on the inside of the visor to be able to react to the projection...kinda like the HUD system that gets displayed on the windshield of some cars). Maybe have a local slot for removable SD storage for video caught by the helmet camera(s) while riding.
The key to this was really in the tech they could have provided; not by going the route they did and stuff everything into the helmet and selling it as a contained unit. I always hated the style of that damn helmet they designed.
Square-Enix has had the right idea IMO. They are reselling their old Franchises (ie Final Fantasy 1 - 6) on the Android market for $15 a pop, and people are paying it because these are quality ports. Granted FF 2, 3 and 5 never made it to the US in their original form (the US's FF 2 and FF 3 were Japan's FF 4 and FF 6 respectively) so that increases the value a bit; but S-E has actually gone through to update the UI to work with the touch interfaces natively, along with BT controllers that can connect to the phone/tab, cross device cloud saving in addition to local storage saves (so I can take a game I'm playing on my phone, throw the save to their cloud, and then download resume it on my Shield connected to the big screen...and vice versa), and improved the graphics to look good on newer hardware.
If I had the option to play an updated version of the original Legend of Zelda that has a great UI to match the device type it's being played on, updated graphics (maybe using 3D models instead of sprites, a la "Tiny Keep"), multiple device compatibility with cloud saves, etc... I'd be more than happy to slap down $15-$20 on it. Hell, given that most Android devices have some kind of Mic system, they could even give an update based on the Famicom version where you could actually shout down a room full of Pols Voice instead of using up arrows to one hit kill them (warning...that was a spoiler. sorry).
My point is, people have already shown Nintendo that there's an interest in (re)purchasing 20-30 year old games to play on their new TVs and 3DS using the Wii(U)'s and 3DS' Virtual Console system for $5 - $10 a pop. Square-Enix and a few other companies of the classic console era have also shown that there's an interest in playing older titles with updated experiences. I'm not saying that Nintendo can afford to become exclusively an Android developer (Square-Enix, SEGA, EA, etc still have their bigger budget console and PC offerings going on), but I think they are missing out on a very large market by not going forward with expanding into mobile development at least for their older titles/franchises.
Besides...have you played those free Android games? You get what you pay for is no less true in the Android ecosystem. (Hint: games that are free to download but you have to pay real money for items, boosters, and upgrades to be able to get a decent playing advantage are not free [Pokemon])
Hell, it might even blow the doors off running 3 or 4 copies of Crysis at once without breaking much of a sweat, technical configuration of the overall system notwithstanding to permit such horsefuckery.
So there's a hard 100% certainty that businesses did not in any way ever take into account Blackberry's track record of giving up data to any government entities without hesitation or resistance? Even if a company used that as .001% of the reason for abandoning Blackberry, and employee lack of enthusiasm over BB was 99.999%, it still makes the GGP's point true: It's still a part of the reason for Blackberry's decline, and probably a much bigger part than the hypothetical .001% that I used here. Also, what's to say that BB's data retention and sharing policies aren't a good part of why users have started ditching BB for the other platforms. Sure...usability, apps, and design decisions were probably a greater part of the reason, but I'm sure BB's stance on data didn't help matters. And if it was at all a part of the users' decision to abandon, by extension it becomes a part of the reason for corporate abandonment of the platform, even if they don't directly realize it.
tau=2pi