That is the crucial part of your post. It is obvious that the scientists who study this field know more about it than the average person. So why do the people who admit they don't understand the issue keep wanting to claim that the scientists are wrong.
They claim to be sceptics, but they invariably accept without question the findings that match what they want to believe - that we might have dodged an ice age or it might not be warming as fast as predicted (even though they have to gloss over the part where it is getting warmer).
Then they will make simplistic claims to argue against the scientific world as if the scientists never thought of that aspect, like that the temperature rise is just within the margin of error or that scientists hadn't considered that the temperature changes could be due to the sun. If only just one scientist would study the sun then we could settle this quickly. Oh wait, they do!
Finally, they attempt to trivialise the problem by saying that all this fuss is just about being a tiny bit warmer, or that it is just about being less snow in the world. This ignores all the things that scientists predicted that is already occurring, like increased extreme weather events and various species dying out.
My point is that this debate tends to be those who know what they are talking about and those who don't. If you were a sceptic, which side would you consider to be more trustworthy?
Is it a wonder that there is a growing contempt for China and its actions?
If all it takes is for one citizen to copy a bit of code for you to hold his country in contempt, then you must really hate America after all those people lost billions of dollars in the Enron scandal. Of course, I chose the Enron example at random, but there are probably thousands of criminal acts occurring across the country every day. If you are going to just single out the ones committed by people of Chinese decent then think that says more about you than China.
You can get whatever visa you want in china whenever you want. You just have to bribe the right person, which is the socially accepted norm.
Really? Are you saying that bribery is the only way to get a visa in China? Is that based on your experience or did you just have a guess? Or maybe you read some other Anonymous Coward say the same thing, with the same lack of evidence. It seems to me that you have just replaced the first unfounded assumption that China would not allow people to emmigrate to their country with another assumption that you cannot do emmigrate without engaging in a bit of payola.
As soon as someone mentions China, people come out of the woodwork to make every bad claim that they can think of - even if it is not relevant to the topic in hand or even true. Don't get me wrong, there is a lot to criticize about China, but that doesn't mean that we should have to go through the same tedious list of reasons why we all hate the country on each/. story.
Try moving to China to get a job. I dare you. Good luck with that. Then come back and tell me how artificial those borders are.
Wow! That's a lot of research to do for a slashdot post.
But what is your point? That you cannot emmigrate to China? China has several types of visas that can be used for this purpose: short term visas for business (6 months, although this can actually be higher if you are coming from the US!), study visas and of course permanent immigration visas. Yes, you do have to show that you have legitimate business or a job that awaits you, but what country does not have some stipulation like this?
The GP said "At one time in history 97% of the world's scientists thought the world was flat.".
The GP did not say when that time was.
I am sure that they were not called scientists back then. And even so, did they think the world was flat because they had applied scientific method to the problem and come up with an incorrect answer, or had they just not put any thought into the problem and just assumed that it was so. That could hardly be a valid comparison to the enormous amount of research that has gone into the climate these days.
Then again, the war in Iraq was at least based on the technicalities of Iraq breaking the UN resolutions.
Why? Because Iraq wouldn't produce all those weapons of mass destruction that they didn't actually have? While the US kept referring to Resolution 1441, a lot of other countries argued that there was not any proof of significant non-compliance - especially enough to justify 8 years of war.
The 9/11 attack is still considered a crime here and not an act of war. The reason for the rallying behind the Americans was probably something to do with military contracts, rents, investments and economic support, while fully knowing who is going to pay the cost in blood.
No way! There was genuine heartfelt grief for the events that happened on September 11, even from some countries that were not traditionally supporters of the US. When I said that "other countries rallied behind the US" I was referring to public support. The public doesn't care about military contract or economic support. They saw a people who were in shock and morning and they wept for them.
I don't have a faintest idea why those anti-war protestors protested against the war in Iraq while sleeping through the actions in Afghanistan. From my perspective they simply didn't get it.
I find it amazing that you think that allegedy breaking a technicality of a UN resolution can be justification for war while killing thousands of civilians in a horrendous act is not. Either all those anti-war protesters were wrong, or you are wrong. I'm thinking that it is you.
Since when does the US government limit itself to doing what it can afford? Look at the debt levels now and tell me that the Afghanistan and Iraq wars were affordable.
Besides, it is ridiculously simplistic to say this decision was due to money concerns, especially when the US does actually have military forces based in both of those countries so there is at least some cooperation with those governents. Relations with Pakistan are strained to say the least, with Pakistan kicking the troops out of one of those bases after some friendly fire incidents and the operation to kill Osama bin Laden (which raised questions about what the Pakistani government knew).
I agree that while the war in Iraq could never be considered as self defense, the justification about Afganistan does have some merit. However, I also think that there was probably an element of opportunistic regime change too. Let's face it, the 911 attackers were mostly from Saudi Arabia and Osama bin Laden was eventually found in Pakistan (with no thanks to the Pakistan government) and yet we managed to refrain from actually invading those two countries. I guess the difference was that those countries allowed us to enter them in force. I presume Afganistan would not (did someone actually ask them?).
Iraq was absolutely about regime change, and was a serious misstep IMHO. A lot of countries around the world rallied behind the US after 911, but were caught off guard by the sudden posturing by the US against Iraq about WMDs. It came out of the blue, and seemed to be quite unprovoked. A lot of genuine goodwill towards the country evaporated, almost overnight. The real shame is that while the war in Iraq may have divided the nation, the reaction to the criticism by other countries seemed to unite everyone again. Look at the strong feelings that are still prevalent towards France because they dared to question the existence of WMDs, even though they turned out to be right.
The people who still harbor a grudge against the French seem to be as arrogant as a bloodly Frenchman!
Based on the current sales of Windows Phone devices, I would say yes. Companies like HTC which have a foot in both camps have a larger range of Android phones, presumable because they sell more units of that platform.
I honestly don't hear many people saying they bought a Samsung because it runs Android. Most people just want a phone with email and web, and if it's not an iPhone they want, they'll go with whatever is on sale. That usually is a Samsung. Android often doesn't play into it.
I am not that is true as a general rule. I think that brand recognition goes a long way, and Android has all the buzz lately. I have had the opposite experience that you describe. As being the "tech guy" at my work, people come up to me asking about Android after reading about it in the news. As yet, nobody has asked me about Samsung (or any brand) in particular. It may be that after they have made their purchase they claim that they just wanted something to check their email, but that would downplay how much thought people do put into these decisions.
So the story is that Samsung sell so many phones/devices that they can strong arm Google now, although we do not know if they are doing this, or if they even want to do this, or what it is that they would want if they did actually do it. We don't even know exactly how many units they are selling!
But we do know that Google would have no choice but to acquiesce, otherwise Samsung could turn to Windows Phone (which would ruin Samsung's sales overnight), or they could fork the OS and make their own version - even though that would also result in their sales dropping.
This story is just some people coming up with some make believe stories, and citing each other to back them up.
Some people consider ketchup a vegetable too, but it doesn't make it so.
I could point out that it is neither a fruit nor a vegetable because it is actually a condiment made from a variety of ingredients, but it would be a douche thing to do because it is obvious that you meant the humble tomato - just as the use of the word pollution to describe CO2 does not alter the point of the article.
That said, it does still fit the simple dictionary definition for pollution anyway:
Noun:
The presence in or introduction into the environment of a substance or thing that has harmful or poisonous effects.
No, I think he was pointing at the fact that, although the article talks a lot about 'pollution' the numbers it gives only refer to CO2. Which is not pollution. Doh.
No, that argument was not mentioned in the original post. It only discussed the different themes covered in the summary. And some people do consider the CO2 emissions to be pollutants.
The consensus is about the earth getting hotter, which would make sense since we're going away from an ice age, not toward one.
That does not explain the sudden increase in temperature since the industrial revolution.
There is no consensus about man's impact on the earth.
I think that you will find that there is a consensus in the scientific community that global warming is affected by man. There may be variations in the estimates of how much is due to our CO2 output, but that does not mean that you should consider that the principles about climate change are wrong.
From the article, it would appear that mankind is curbing our inevitable heat wave.
Do you mean the cold front that appeared in one region over a short timespan? I do not think that you can extrapolate this to have any meaning for the entire planet.
What argument do you think was being made? The summary just grouped separate environmental reports into the one post. Do you also think that it was a problem that they mentioned more than one country when the story title just mentioned China?
I'm in the minority where we actually wear computers out (not just the disks), even when we could afford new ones. I'm not doing more demanding tasks than I was 5 years ago, so whats wrong with a 5 year-old computer?
How about a bit of compassion for those Russian hackers who are also using your computer. Why should they have to put up with sub-standard hardware to run their botnet?
Jeez, some people just have no sense of helping the community!
But seriously, I think that in this day of ever more powerful smartphones, an increasing number of people are wearing their computers out.
If this does happen and anyone is surprised by it since Elop took over, they're idiots.
And if it doesn't happen, then what are they?
The Nokia/WP7 partnership has already done damage to Nokia
The damage to Nokia started long before the Windows Phone deal. The Symbian OS had stagnated, and while it was successful it was not famous like iOS or Android. (I still think my old Symbian phone was better than my iPhone in a lot of respects like multitasking and web browser.)
But Nokia lacked direction the with Maemo which got merged with Intel's Moblin to become MeeGo. But their efforts with MeeGo went virtually unpublicised and never sold well. The only reason I got an iPhone was because I could not buy the MeeGo phone I wanted in my country. By the time it was released here, all the carriers were pushing iPhones so it was too late to get a foot hold.
The people within Nokia that have carrier relationships would be kept on and assimilated to doing sales the Microsoft way. Redmond may have their flaws, but sales really isn't one of them.
Really? How many Windows Phones do you see getting sold? I think that Microsoft does have a problem in this respect. And if Nokia sells their sales team too then it is an even worse deal for them. They would lose manufacturing facilities, sales division, and access to the lucrative smart phone market. What would they do then - sell inflatable pools?
Plus, none of the other OEMS really screamed when Google bought Motorola Mobility.
Any screaming would have been behind closed doors.
He nailed the forced move of Nokia to Windows Phone back months before it happened and people said the same things about him then.
(Forced move?) Did he really do the same thing then: make the same prediction six months apart?
Nothing, but I suspect that Microsoft is, by far, the party with the most power here.
I don't think so. Microsoft's phone OS has been flatlining, and without Nokia on board then they have no hope of resurrecting the platform. Microsoft needs Nokia more than Nokia needs Microsoft.
What would be left? A shell of a company, loaded down with restrictions that would bar them from entering the smartphone space and, for spite, from ever using the patents they sell with Linux.
Do you really think the shareholders of Nokia would stand for a deal that prevents the world's largest phone company from taking part of the most lucrative part of the mobile/cell phone market? I don't think that this would be approved by the shareholders, and if it went ahead without any vote by them then it would result in lawsuits against the board members.
If I were going to fling (more) barbs in Microsoft's direction, I expect they'd leverage the patents they have to raise the "price" of Android even further above Windows Phone 7, and constrain the options of other vendors so that they have no choice but to compete directly with MS or pay them a ton of cash.
But if Microsoft has a subservient board at Nokia, then surely they could get them to go after Android to reduce the chance of anti-trust allegations. If this was the real goal of Microsoft then they would not need to spend US$19 billion to do it.
Is there any point in posting an unsubstantiated rumour by someone who has previously claimed that the deal was happening back in May and that Nokia's phone division would be sold by the end of 2011? Nokia is predominantly a phone maker, and I really can't see them wanting to sell the main business of their company to anyone. What would be left of the company?
And would Microsoft really want to spend the claimed $19 billion on a division that has yet to prove that anybody wants to buy one of their Windows phones? And Nokia have the connections with the carriers that is required to get the phones into the retail system. Given the way Windows phones haven't really been pushed by the carriers, I would think that they need the sales team at Nokia. Buying the patents and manufacturing plants only solves part of the problem - and that assumes that there is a problem in the first place that requires the purchase.
Finally, I don't think the other phone companies like HTC, LG, and Samsung would feel happy about Microsoft moving into their territory. This sale would only cause friction with those companies, is an expensive risk, and provides no benefit considering that Nokia are already committed to selling Microsoft's platform now.
You are absolutely right. I used to wait to upgrade my components until they were double the speed of my existing hardware. Now I wait until it is at least 10 times faster (and even then there needs to be another incentive like having cards or CPUs run at lower power to reduce heat and noise).
Since most computers from this century are still fast enough to run the standard office applications, there isn't a lot of reason for people to upgrade their hardware, and since most people get their new OS preinstalled with a new system it seems quite reasonable for them to stay with XP.
The only real reasons to upgrade the OS is when software no longer runs under XP (like IE9 which is no great loss), and for the slightly increased security. I say "slightly" because XP is not too bad if you log in with a limited user account and use a 3rd party firewall to block all applications by default and limit ActiveX to work on known sites (eg. Flash on YouTube).
I don't think that there would be any pirated^W accessible multimedia software that would not work under Windows 7 too. The claims of DRM for Vista and later Windows were nonsense. The only problem that I heard of was with some Bluray software on projection systems because the drivers did not implement the trusted video system.
PlayForSure initially had four months notice of closure, but Microsoft bowed to pressure and changed it to 3½ years. After that time you could still use the music that had been authorised already, but you could not play it on new machines. It was not the immediate cutoff that you imply, but it is still a good cautionary tale about DRM.
Slashdot Mirror
...for all we know.
That is the crucial part of your post. It is obvious that the scientists who study this field know more about it than the average person. So why do the people who admit they don't understand the issue keep wanting to claim that the scientists are wrong.
They claim to be sceptics, but they invariably accept without question the findings that match what they want to believe - that we might have dodged an ice age or it might not be warming as fast as predicted (even though they have to gloss over the part where it is getting warmer).
Then they will make simplistic claims to argue against the scientific world as if the scientists never thought of that aspect, like that the temperature rise is just within the margin of error or that scientists hadn't considered that the temperature changes could be due to the sun. If only just one scientist would study the sun then we could settle this quickly. Oh wait, they do!
Finally, they attempt to trivialise the problem by saying that all this fuss is just about being a tiny bit warmer, or that it is just about being less snow in the world. This ignores all the things that scientists predicted that is already occurring, like increased extreme weather events and various species dying out.
My point is that this debate tends to be those who know what they are talking about and those who don't. If you were a sceptic, which side would you consider to be more trustworthy?
Is it a wonder that there is a growing contempt for China and its actions?
If all it takes is for one citizen to copy a bit of code for you to hold his country in contempt, then you must really hate America after all those people lost billions of dollars in the Enron scandal. Of course, I chose the Enron example at random, but there are probably thousands of criminal acts occurring across the country every day. If you are going to just single out the ones committed by people of Chinese decent then think that says more about you than China.
You can get whatever visa you want in china whenever you want. You just have to bribe the right person, which is the socially accepted norm.
Really? Are you saying that bribery is the only way to get a visa in China? Is that based on your experience or did you just have a guess? Or maybe you read some other Anonymous Coward say the same thing, with the same lack of evidence. It seems to me that you have just replaced the first unfounded assumption that China would not allow people to emmigrate to their country with another assumption that you cannot do emmigrate without engaging in a bit of payola.
As soon as someone mentions China, people come out of the woodwork to make every bad claim that they can think of - even if it is not relevant to the topic in hand or even true. Don't get me wrong, there is a lot to criticize about China, but that doesn't mean that we should have to go through the same tedious list of reasons why we all hate the country on each /. story.
Try moving to China to get a job. I dare you. Good luck with that. Then come back and tell me how artificial those borders are.
Wow! That's a lot of research to do for a slashdot post.
But what is your point? That you cannot emmigrate to China? China has several types of visas that can be used for this purpose: short term visas for business (6 months, although this can actually be higher if you are coming from the US!), study visas and of course permanent immigration visas. Yes, you do have to show that you have legitimate business or a job that awaits you, but what country does not have some stipulation like this?
The GP said "At one time in history 97% of the world's scientists thought the world was flat.".
The GP did not say when that time was.
I am sure that they were not called scientists back then. And even so, did they think the world was flat because they had applied scientific method to the problem and come up with an incorrect answer, or had they just not put any thought into the problem and just assumed that it was so. That could hardly be a valid comparison to the enormous amount of research that has gone into the climate these days.
Then again, the war in Iraq was at least based on the technicalities of Iraq breaking the UN resolutions.
Why? Because Iraq wouldn't produce all those weapons of mass destruction that they didn't actually have? While the US kept referring to Resolution 1441, a lot of other countries argued that there was not any proof of significant non-compliance - especially enough to justify 8 years of war.
The 9/11 attack is still considered a crime here and not an act of war. The reason for the rallying behind the Americans was probably something to do with military contracts, rents, investments and economic support, while fully knowing who is going to pay the cost in blood.
No way! There was genuine heartfelt grief for the events that happened on September 11, even from some countries that were not traditionally supporters of the US. When I said that "other countries rallied behind the US" I was referring to public support. The public doesn't care about military contract or economic support. They saw a people who were in shock and morning and they wept for them.
I don't have a faintest idea why those anti-war protestors protested against the war in Iraq while sleeping through the actions in Afghanistan. From my perspective they simply didn't get it.
I find it amazing that you think that allegedy breaking a technicality of a UN resolution can be justification for war while killing thousands of civilians in a horrendous act is not. Either all those anti-war protesters were wrong, or you are wrong. I'm thinking that it is you.
What difference does that make? If you can fake your domain then you can make yourself appear to come from any country in the world.
I run www.gotonicaragua.com and about 70% of our spam comes from China; the other 30% comes from Russia.
And on this site, the spam comes from Nicaragua.
We've had to blacklist both those domains flat out in order to keep the site running.
What spam ever comes from a real domain? It is always faked, so there is no point in blacklisting a domain.
Since when does the US government limit itself to doing what it can afford? Look at the debt levels now and tell me that the Afghanistan and Iraq wars were affordable.
Besides, it is ridiculously simplistic to say this decision was due to money concerns, especially when the US does actually have military forces based in both of those countries so there is at least some cooperation with those governents. Relations with Pakistan are strained to say the least, with Pakistan kicking the troops out of one of those bases after some friendly fire incidents and the operation to kill Osama bin Laden (which raised questions about what the Pakistani government knew).
I agree that while the war in Iraq could never be considered as self defense, the justification about Afganistan does have some merit. However, I also think that there was probably an element of opportunistic regime change too. Let's face it, the 911 attackers were mostly from Saudi Arabia and Osama bin Laden was eventually found in Pakistan (with no thanks to the Pakistan government) and yet we managed to refrain from actually invading those two countries. I guess the difference was that those countries allowed us to enter them in force. I presume Afganistan would not (did someone actually ask them?).
Iraq was absolutely about regime change, and was a serious misstep IMHO. A lot of countries around the world rallied behind the US after 911, but were caught off guard by the sudden posturing by the US against Iraq about WMDs. It came out of the blue, and seemed to be quite unprovoked. A lot of genuine goodwill towards the country evaporated, almost overnight. The real shame is that while the war in Iraq may have divided the nation, the reaction to the criticism by other countries seemed to unite everyone again. Look at the strong feelings that are still prevalent towards France because they dared to question the existence of WMDs, even though they turned out to be right.
The people who still harbor a grudge against the French seem to be as arrogant as a bloodly Frenchman!
Would it ruin Samsung's sales overnight?
Based on the current sales of Windows Phone devices, I would say yes. Companies like HTC which have a foot in both camps have a larger range of Android phones, presumable because they sell more units of that platform.
I honestly don't hear many people saying they bought a Samsung because it runs Android. Most people just want a phone with email and web, and if it's not an iPhone they want, they'll go with whatever is on sale. That usually is a Samsung. Android often doesn't play into it.
I am not that is true as a general rule. I think that brand recognition goes a long way, and Android has all the buzz lately. I have had the opposite experience that you describe. As being the "tech guy" at my work, people come up to me asking about Android after reading about it in the news. As yet, nobody has asked me about Samsung (or any brand) in particular. It may be that after they have made their purchase they claim that they just wanted something to check their email, but that would downplay how much thought people do put into these decisions.
So the story is that Samsung sell so many phones/devices that they can strong arm Google now, although we do not know if they are doing this, or if they even want to do this, or what it is that they would want if they did actually do it. We don't even know exactly how many units they are selling!
But we do know that Google would have no choice but to acquiesce, otherwise Samsung could turn to Windows Phone (which would ruin Samsung's sales overnight), or they could fork the OS and make their own version - even though that would also result in their sales dropping.
This story is just some people coming up with some make believe stories, and citing each other to back them up.
Some people consider ketchup a vegetable too, but it doesn't make it so.
I could point out that it is neither a fruit nor a vegetable because it is actually a condiment made from a variety of ingredients, but it would be a douche thing to do because it is obvious that you meant the humble tomato - just as the use of the word pollution to describe CO2 does not alter the point of the article.
That said, it does still fit the simple dictionary definition for pollution anyway:
Noun: The presence in or introduction into the environment of a substance or thing that has harmful or poisonous effects.
Can you spot the years covering the industrial revolution on that graph?
No, I think he was pointing at the fact that, although the article talks a lot about 'pollution' the numbers it gives only refer to CO2. Which is not pollution. Doh.
No, that argument was not mentioned in the original post. It only discussed the different themes covered in the summary. And some people do consider the CO2 emissions to be pollutants.
The consensus is about the earth getting hotter, which would make sense since we're going away from an ice age, not toward one.
That does not explain the sudden increase in temperature since the industrial revolution.
There is no consensus about man's impact on the earth.
I think that you will find that there is a consensus in the scientific community that global warming is affected by man. There may be variations in the estimates of how much is due to our CO2 output, but that does not mean that you should consider that the principles about climate change are wrong.
From the article, it would appear that mankind is curbing our inevitable heat wave.
Do you mean the cold front that appeared in one region over a short timespan? I do not think that you can extrapolate this to have any meaning for the entire planet.
Juxtaposition is not an argument.
What argument do you think was being made? The summary just grouped separate environmental reports into the one post. Do you also think that it was a problem that they mentioned more than one country when the story title just mentioned China?
I'm in the minority where we actually wear computers out (not just the disks), even when we could afford new ones. I'm not doing more demanding tasks than I was 5 years ago, so whats wrong with a 5 year-old computer?
How about a bit of compassion for those Russian hackers who are also using your computer. Why should they have to put up with sub-standard hardware to run their botnet?
Jeez, some people just have no sense of helping the community!
But seriously, I think that in this day of ever more powerful smartphones, an increasing number of people are wearing their computers out.
If this does happen and anyone is surprised by it since Elop took over, they're idiots.
And if it doesn't happen, then what are they?
The Nokia/WP7 partnership has already done damage to Nokia
The damage to Nokia started long before the Windows Phone deal. The Symbian OS had stagnated, and while it was successful it was not famous like iOS or Android. (I still think my old Symbian phone was better than my iPhone in a lot of respects like multitasking and web browser.)
But Nokia lacked direction the with Maemo which got merged with Intel's Moblin to become MeeGo. But their efforts with MeeGo went virtually unpublicised and never sold well. The only reason I got an iPhone was because I could not buy the MeeGo phone I wanted in my country. By the time it was released here, all the carriers were pushing iPhones so it was too late to get a foot hold.
The people within Nokia that have carrier relationships would be kept on and assimilated to doing sales the Microsoft way. Redmond may have their flaws, but sales really isn't one of them.
Really? How many Windows Phones do you see getting sold? I think that Microsoft does have a problem in this respect. And if Nokia sells their sales team too then it is an even worse deal for them. They would lose manufacturing facilities, sales division, and access to the lucrative smart phone market. What would they do then - sell inflatable pools?
Plus, none of the other OEMS really screamed when Google bought Motorola Mobility.
Any screaming would have been behind closed doors.
He nailed the forced move of Nokia to Windows Phone back months before it happened and people said the same things about him then.
(Forced move?) Did he really do the same thing then: make the same prediction six months apart?
Nothing, but I suspect that Microsoft is, by far, the party with the most power here.
I don't think so. Microsoft's phone OS has been flatlining, and without Nokia on board then they have no hope of resurrecting the platform. Microsoft needs Nokia more than Nokia needs Microsoft.
What would be left? A shell of a company, loaded down with restrictions that would bar them from entering the smartphone space and, for spite, from ever using the patents they sell with Linux.
Do you really think the shareholders of Nokia would stand for a deal that prevents the world's largest phone company from taking part of the most lucrative part of the mobile/cell phone market? I don't think that this would be approved by the shareholders, and if it went ahead without any vote by them then it would result in lawsuits against the board members.
If I were going to fling (more) barbs in Microsoft's direction, I expect they'd leverage the patents they have to raise the "price" of Android even further above Windows Phone 7, and constrain the options of other vendors so that they have no choice but to compete directly with MS or pay them a ton of cash.
But if Microsoft has a subservient board at Nokia, then surely they could get them to go after Android to reduce the chance of anti-trust allegations. If this was the real goal of Microsoft then they would not need to spend US$19 billion to do it.
Actually, it does date back a long time. The concept was not an invention of the US consititution.
Is there any point in posting an unsubstantiated rumour by someone who has previously claimed that the deal was happening back in May and that Nokia's phone division would be sold by the end of 2011? Nokia is predominantly a phone maker, and I really can't see them wanting to sell the main business of their company to anyone. What would be left of the company?
And would Microsoft really want to spend the claimed $19 billion on a division that has yet to prove that anybody wants to buy one of their Windows phones? And Nokia have the connections with the carriers that is required to get the phones into the retail system. Given the way Windows phones haven't really been pushed by the carriers, I would think that they need the sales team at Nokia. Buying the patents and manufacturing plants only solves part of the problem - and that assumes that there is a problem in the first place that requires the purchase.
Finally, I don't think the other phone companies like HTC, LG, and Samsung would feel happy about Microsoft moving into their territory. This sale would only cause friction with those companies, is an expensive risk, and provides no benefit considering that Nokia are already committed to selling Microsoft's platform now.
You are absolutely right. I used to wait to upgrade my components until they were double the speed of my existing hardware. Now I wait until it is at least 10 times faster (and even then there needs to be another incentive like having cards or CPUs run at lower power to reduce heat and noise).
Since most computers from this century are still fast enough to run the standard office applications, there isn't a lot of reason for people to upgrade their hardware, and since most people get their new OS preinstalled with a new system it seems quite reasonable for them to stay with XP.
The only real reasons to upgrade the OS is when software no longer runs under XP (like IE9 which is no great loss), and for the slightly increased security. I say "slightly" because XP is not too bad if you log in with a limited user account and use a 3rd party firewall to block all applications by default and limit ActiveX to work on known sites (eg. Flash on YouTube).
I don't think that there would be any pirated^W accessible multimedia software that would not work under Windows 7 too. The claims of DRM for Vista and later Windows were nonsense. The only problem that I heard of was with some Bluray software on projection systems because the drivers did not implement the trusted video system.
PlayForSure initially had four months notice of closure, but Microsoft bowed to pressure and changed it to 3½ years. After that time you could still use the music that had been authorised already, but you could not play it on new machines. It was not the immediate cutoff that you imply, but it is still a good cautionary tale about DRM.