Movies are irrelevant, as they weren't the topic of conversation. And your comment about music is bilge - 9 gigs (my current collection) is over a thousand songs. If you can't find an "appropriate" (whatever the heck you mean by that) selection in there, the problem isn't lack of memory on your phone.

Seriously, like several commenters on this subthread, you're way the heck out on the end of the bell curve - but blithely unaware of it.

Streaming stuff is fine in urban areas, but if you travel outside of urban areas with little phone service regularly, and you don't want to carry another device, it's pretty irritating to be significantly limited in the amount to music you can carry.

Jesus H. Christ on a pogo stick - just how much music do you need? On my (recently replaced with a 32gb 5S*) 16gb 4S I could have a ton of apps, several hundred photos, and still have room for six days (continuous play, no repeat) worth of tunes.

As the grandparent said, this isn't some sneaky marketing plan... I suspect16gb really is enough for most common usage.

*Pretty much just because I could.

You are missing the point. All of my Android phones include the ability to add a MicroSD card. I don't care how much memory is on the phone, my data (pictures etc) doesn't reside there. Apple's continued refusal to add a MicroSD slot is just more of their way of ripping off their customers.

I don't need to put an SD card in my iPhone - I have the proper cable and 3tb of HDD capacity. The 32gig of memory on my phone is just short term storage for anything I want to keep.

These aren't NASA flights - they're seats on bus (or airplane if you prefer) routes which NASA has bought from Boeing (or SpaceX). Thus Boeing (or SpaceX) is free (in theory) to do whatever the hell they want with any spare capacity.

The issue isn't whether or not he won, so, nice handwaving there. The issue is the State Of The Union and our international relations.

In 30 years, the way things are going the UK proper may as well be bankrupt, socially and racially divided, a shadow of its former glory

Frankly, British bankruptcy is always and always has been thirty years off for the thirty odd years I've been paying attention to international politics.

Why go the opposite direction, even if for some reason you really do have the need for those particular properties?

Because for any given hobby... there's always going to be someone out at the end of the bell curve. The photographer with $190k worth of gear who drives a $500 car and lives in a $5k house. The model train enthusiast who builds a 2500sqft house around his 1800sqft train layout. The IT geek with enough horsepower in his basement to run a decent sized ISP.. They're all birds of a feather.

(Disclaimer: Yes, I actually know the first two examples personally.)

Which is still the truth, in general. Photography on a cell phone does not equate to photography with a digital camera -- knowing what f-stop is, or shutter speed, or focal length, or a LOT of the other of the fine-grain minutiae that comes from a lot of time spent with film and digital cameras taking hundreds, if not thousands, of photographs.

No, photography on a cell phone does not equate to photography that deals with fine grained minutiae. But, so what? Technical minutiae isn't art. It's what geeks and wannabees toss around in order to puff themselves up and make themselves feel important.

All that experience can be accumulated hundreds of times faster in digital where you can see immediate results.

I'm gonna have to go ahead and disagree with you on that for the vast majority. Why worry about composition, aperture, exposure, and white balance when one can burn through dozens upon dozens of photos, previewing the results immediately waiting for something worthwhile to show up, and sort/crop/align later.

You aren't disagreeing with the grandparent, you're talking about apples while he's talking oranges. And in reality, you're both correct.
 
He's correct in that by speeding up the loop (from taking the picture to reviewing the finished product) it's possible to learn photography much faster today than in the film era. You're correct that it's possible to produce a good image by sheer luck and Photoshop.
 

I've seen this first hand with my daughters and their friends. The shotgun approach may produce the occasional interesting photos but does not lead to refined skills required to produce stunning images.

But here's where you go off the rails into apple territory - your daughter and her friends are not all photographers. And just because they aren't interested in actually learning photography, that doesn't preclude those that are interested from taking advantage of the faster loop to learn from doing so.

Looking at Bezos's New Shepherd Vertical Takeoff Vertical Landing vehicle you might think that somewhere along the line Jeff caught a glimpse of Boeing's old design.

Maybe, maybe not. The same basic design was proposed as a reusable first stage for the Space Shuttle (in it's first incarnation as a crew taxi) by (IIRC) McDonnell Douglas back in the early/mid 1960's.

Charlie Stross recently posted a very good take on this: This is a permanent change. Whatever happens during the first few years is basically irrelevant, compared to the long-term results. Did Norway separating from Sweden cause short-term economic upheaval? Does that matter at all a century later?

Yes it matters a century later - because what happens in those first few years sets the stage for what happens a century later. Historical events don't 'just happen' and then toddle off into the history books without leaving long term effects, real and "imaginary" (psychological).

I didn't say it was better - or worse. I merely pointed out that the two bids were not identical, and thus comparisons drawn on the basis (assumption) that they were identical were deeply flawed.

I did not think SpaceX even with its excellent track record would have convinced the bureaucrats to give them a solid chance instead of just give everything to Boeing as usual.

SpaceX's excellent track record? Ship me some of what you're smoking, as it must be good stuff. (Seriously, where do you guys get this stuff?)
 
SpaceX's track record is far from excellent. The first flight of the Falcon 9 was six months late, the first flight of the Falcon/Dragon COTS was two years late. (And that's pretty much been the pattern to date - they've been unable to demonstrate a consistent ability to meet launch schedules or to maintain a significant flight rate.) They've had a steady series of technical problems with both the Falcon booster and the Dragon CRS capsules. Granted, they're getting better, but their track record overall is spotty at best.
 
That is why SpaceX was given a solid chance rather than the whole enchilada.

Spend your money more wisely.

Get your facts more straight. Dragon V2 is in fact derived from the Dragon CRS, but it's not the same vehicle and emphatically has not been flying for two years.

Boeing got nearly twice the funding for a conservative, unimaginative Apollo capsule

What's wrong with a "conservative unimaginative" design? This wasn't intended to be a beauty contest or to provide geek stroke material, it's a contract for workaday vehicles and services. And as for costs, you've got to remember the difference between the vehicles - SpaceX bid a derivative of an existing craft (I.E. with a lot of the development already paid for), while Boeing bid a new design. Comparing straight up dollars is not comparing like-to-like.