Except it isn't. Tomi has rather damning evidence in his wall of text:

The FACT is, that Nokia CEO Stephen Elop told Nokia shareholders - and I quote - "Indeed, Microsoft did buy the Skype company as part of the ecosystem that comes with Windows Phone and Windows. The feedback from operators is they don’t like Skype, of course." Elop went on to explain why carriers/operators hate Skype " (because) it could take away from revenues."

This is spoken by Elop himself. Why do you think Nokia fell from being twice as large as it's biggest competitor to completely fall out the top ten in mobile in a mere three years? It's called Windows Phone, and nobody wants a windows phone!

The problem is not that retail does not carry WinPhone. The problem is that carriers - e.g. Verizon, AT&T, Sprint etc - Will not subsidize windows phones, and they started this ever since the Skype purchase. That is what is meant by the "carrier boycott". Oh sure they will sell those phones, but only at full price. Why is this a problem? Well, "you want this winphone for $49 a month or this androidphone for $29 a month?" is a serious problem because Joe Sixpack doesn't care about Android or Windows, he will take the cheapest alternative.

Is this a fixable problem? No, it is not. Skype is now an integrated part of Microsofts Cloud strategy. So this means Microsoft has to choose between Skype or Mobile.

Please do note that carriers do not wish to support technology that will one day make them a "mere data channel". Carriers have built their business on exclusive services in their own networks. By subsidising Windows phones, they are funding technology which will make them obsolete one day. Sure they are only delaying the inevitable, but that's how they roll.

Because of the Carrier boycott.

Windows Phone will most probably never see double digit market share. The reason? Skype. Microsoft owns Skype, the single biggest threat to current carrier revenue. The Skype/VOIP revolution will happen, but if you were a carrier, would YOU invest in technology that would kill you off, long-term?

Tomi Ahonen has a rather complete rant about this topic from late 2012, and very little has changed since then.

Sony Xperia Z Compact? It's 4.3 rather than 4 inches but other than that seems to fit your bill...

They also don't spread to more than maybe 10-20 000 people at most. Really big ones get maybe 100 000 views.

Compare that to blockbusters that often gets viewed by 10 million people or more.

Economics of scale - they do scale. A lot.

Well, higan (formerly bsnes) comes extremely close, with very few known bugs in it's SNES core (other cores not as good though). :)

Re messed up docs: Yes, exactly, and those errors come up because Word uses the "visual" workflow, while Writer uses the "structure" workflow which IMO is both easier to understand, less prone to errors and easier to use.

LibreOffice is just as capable as Office, as Munich has proven with it's LiMux migration. Different, but capable. Besides - is it LO being incompatible with MSO or MSO being incompatible with LO? ;)

As for resumes - I always send those as PDFs which are super-easy to create in LO. But whatever.

If that is your only argument - Office2007 isn't compatible with Office2003/2000 either. So not a very good one.

The reason why LibreOffice sometimes "messes up" your layout is that it uses the "document structure" workflow instead of the "visual" workflow as seen with Word. Once you find out "Wait, I don't have to care about how this looks until I've finished with the report, and then I just change a few parameters", it's amazing how much Writer throws itself to be out of your way as much as possible.

With word I have to constantly mind what format I need to use. "Wait, should I use 12pt or 16pt text here? And was it Verdana or Times New Roman?" In LO - no need for that. "That's a headline, that one is a paragraph, that one is a bullet list, and there we have a quote." Mark text accordingly, insert emphasis where needed, done, no need to bother about looks at all, and it's easy as pie to, for instance, a table of contents. That's why I find LO superior.

Oh and now you might say "But word has that too!" - yes, and LO has the visual styles too. But in LO everything is designed through the document structure paradigm. In Word it's just a half-assed mess.

Finally, yes, LO Writer is quite a bit limited when designing, say, a pamphlet - but why on earth would you use a word processor to make a pamphlet? Get indesign or Scribus for that!

Don't you mean

I think the path of least resistance when it comes to federation would be to make MG compatible with the BuddyCloud MediaServer concept, since BC being based on XMPP already has excellent federation.

Regardless I think this is promising. My hope is that GMG+Federation will some day in the future challenge both Facebook, Youtube and similar sites - which is sorely needed because the contentID-issue at Google has shown that we need a solution where users control their own data.

That's more Youtubes' fault than JoCos.

Youtube's contentID system is crazy these days. It's only a matter of time before someone invites something better than youtube at this rate.

Aye. It could be:

.FFF.
.343.
.1F1.

But it could also be:

.FFF.
.3F3.
.111.

Both choices are equally valid.

Propery formatted board:

.FFF.
.3[]3.
.1[]1.

Problem with Minesweeper though is when you end up with problems like these (5x3 board with 4 mines) - then it's a 50-50 chance of the mine being the lower cell or upper cell, and no way of knowing which one. .FFF. .3[]3. .1[]1.

F - Flagged mine
[] - unopened square
. - Open, empty space

The Bucaneer had this same concept for over a year ago...

Russia may have a strong military, but is it strong enough to take on the entirety of western civilization?

I agree that US has a vested interest - but it's not strong enough to warrant an intervention in a country literally on the other side of the world. Not yet, anyhow.