I used a Windows Phone for a while and it is actually a good product. It was fast and stable and did what I wanted it to do. The UI was actually pretty nice. The one thing that made me go back to Android was the lack of apps and the quality of some of them. I really missed the Google apps that I was used to using. Google is no more of a villain for doing that than Microsoft is for not producing Office or Exchange for Linux, or Apple not producing iTunes for WindowsPhone or Android but Windows Phone with gmail, youtube, and google maps would have been really nice.
BTW yes I know about bing maps and using imap for gmail and the third party youtube apps but I liked google better.
In the end I really wish that WP did better than it looks like it will do. Now what Microsoft is doing to Nokia is shameful.

I guess it makes sense for a startup that wants access to hardware. Still seems like a large waste of money.

" UV isn't ionizing at least the far UV bands are, the lower bands are close enough in energy to cause photochemical reactions that break bonds so they are treated as ionizing radiation"
So yes it is.

With EM non-ionizing radiation in the RF bands the only concern is tissue heating. Even with the standard inverse square law at the standard transmission power of a phone the difference in the heating effect between a belt clip and a phone in your pocket would not be significant.

Depends where in Georgia and Texas and they could be using Wind for renewable power in those locations.
Frankly the place that I would think is logical is in Tennessee using all those TVA dams for power and the lakes for cooling.
What I do not get is why the heck is anyone building one in "silicon valley". The costs of power, land, and cooling would seem to be very high.

Pocket or clip we are talking about non-ionizing em radiation.

I would have given the credit to QT myself. I believe that some Symbian developers also used QT so they could move the Symbian apps over to Linux pretty quickly.

It is not even that simple.
The Arab nations have kept the Palestinians in refugee camps for decades unlike how the US treated Cuban refugees. They have no path to citizenship or even any type of normal life.
Had the Palestinians lived with the UN mandate then things might have been very different.

"Really, the engineering to make and guide a missile is not formidable these days."
Depends on the range and accuracy that you need.
If you need long range and or pin point accuracy then it is actually pretty hard.
GPS will be jammed during a war and near targets and a really accurate INS is a very complex device.
People seem to forget that making big complex devices is still hard and expensive.

Being Debian does not mean it had apps.
Phone apps UI is far different from a FOSS desktop app UI.

"Meanwhile those of us that have been around Slashdot since 2000 have pretty much thrown our hands up."
Imagine how I feel.
I have to agree with you. I really want a new old slashdot but I doubt that the changes I would make would make everyone happy.

I have to admit that I am beginning to wonder if we as a society are mature enough for the internet.
The amount of pure stupid, rude, and or cruel on the internet is overwhelming at times.
Just look at the comments on CNN sometime it makes Slashdot look like a bastion of sanity.

Wow talk about self righteousness.

Here it is in a nutshell.

1. A lot of the Internet and a lot of other services depend on OpenSSH for security. This includes Microsoft.
2. OpenBSD the developer of OpenSSH is short of funds to pay developers to work on OpenSSH.
3. Microsoft gives a big "to OpenBSD community but small to Microsoft" pile of cash to OpenBSD.
Result
OpenBSD can pay the developers to work on OpenSSH, Microsoft gets a better OpenSSH, everyone else gets a better OpenSSH, and Microsoft gets good PR.
This is great outcome and I see no need to quibble about who did more.
It is in fact a win win for everyone.

I think they only sold about 100k of them. In the phone market that is just a drop in the bucket.

I agree that Nokia might have had a real winner with the N900 if they could have gotten the devs and apps. I would have probably gotten one when I moved to T-Mobile if it supported the right bands.
The nokia windows phones was/is a good phone. The OS is a good OS. The lack of apps kills it. For me it was the lack of Google Apps which I use a lot and really like.

While I really liked the idea of a Linux phone from Nokia I have to wonder if those sales where just the faithful.
Honestly I think Nokia's problems where a lack of urgency more than anything else. Symbian was dieing fast because it like PalmOS was was designed for low power and memory constrained hardware. Nokia made brilliant stuff but just could not seem to get it out the door. QT plus what every Nokia called their phone version of Linux that week could have been great. Nokia could have also pushed out a tablet that competed with the iPad in short order. It just seemed like the pipeline at Nokia from the lab to the customer was just too long.

No it is in another room but they added a portable AC to our location because of the poor balance of the AC. At first they put the thermostat in the lab but the server room got too hot so they put in to the server room and we froze. Now they restricted our duct it is summer now and it gets too hot unless we use the portable AC unit. It is not terrible now that we have the system kind of worked out. They are waiting until winter to make the final mods since no one wants to turn off the AC in Florida in the summer. Actually I work with a lot of departments so I am often running over to the lab, RnD, Hardware, and other locations during the day so I usually get at least 4000 steps in at work.