Seems to have missed out on recent election results, that man.

Shill.

You've not understood the situation. Locking them out of the Google Play store doesn't prevent them starting their own app store and installing that as the default app store on their Android phones. It'd then be up to each app developer whether to sell their apps through that new store. For the average developer, why not? It's minimal extra effort for extra sales. And it would make sense for Microsoft to do it; after all, the most-often-cited problem with Windows Phone is that it doesn't have the range of apps that other platforms have.

Google, on the other hand, would have to decide if it was worth their while to not sell their apps (maps, now, search, play movies, play music etc) through the Microsoft store. Actually they might well decide it was worth it for the advertising revenue, just as they sell some of those apps for iOS.

Selling a platform that supports Android apps is well worth it, even if it doesn't get access to Google Play; just look at Blackberry.

You can still be had for patent infringement if your product reproduces an invention claimed in the patent.

I think that'd stand up in court for all of about four seconds. Telling your engineers not to do patent searches in case they come across something similar to what they are working on that they didn't already know about is one thing; setting your engineers to deliberately copy someone else's work is rather another. At any rate, ignorance is no defence to patent infringement, it just helps you avoid the triple damages for wilful infringement.

The whole story is a horrendous beat-up, though. Android is open-source and MS are free to copy it any time they like. There are no proprietary parts of Android that Microsoft would have to replace. The Google Play store *is* proprietary and some Google apps are only (officially/legally) available through it. So Microsoft would have to supply their own implementations of maps (hint: they already have one) their own app store (hint: they already have one, albeit not for Android) and, erm, any other Google apps they thought they couldn't survive without. Since most of the money in Android comes from the Play store and ads in the search and maps apps, I don't think Microsoft are going to be too upset about this revenue going to them and not to Google.

From my skim reading of the interwebs, studies vary enormously. While the one cited by the ISNA gives a total of 1 in 100, the other studies I found all gave numbers between 1 in 4,200 and 1 in 5,000. Of course the result is going to depend heavily on just how you interpret the phrase "differ from standard male or female", but one can't help the suspicion that just maybe ISNA has a bit of an agenda to push and has chosen its referenced study accordingly.

I don't know anything about it, but the "this aspect of the native culture survived the ruthless cultural destruction by Christian missionaries" narrative seems a bit unlikely, since the Tongan word for it is derived from the English word 'lady' (at least according to the Wiki page you cite).

There's, like, this series of books? Something about low-resolution monochrome?

Really?

I'm pretty sure I don't want to know the answer to this, but what exactly is "ambiguous genitalia" and how many people actually have it?

Indeed this seems to be almost the last taboo of Western society. We've come around to divorce, adultery, homosexuality, bisexuality, 'free love', transexuality, BDSM, gay marriage...

But promise two women you'll never leave them and it's prison for you, mister.

Lots of other Western countries already have similar systems. Where I studied in Australia, I 'paid' about $5,000 per year to attend University. The government loaned me this money. Once I graduated, any income over a certain threshold was taxed at 1.5% and any income over a further threshold at 3% until the loan was repaid. The loan amount increases with inflation (CPI).

There are two main problems with it: 1 - it penalises disciplines that are productive in the economy. The BA student who either never works or flips burgers at McDonalds gets his education for free, while the engineers or doctors have to pay. 2 - it encourages brain drain. Since the repayment is through the tax system, the easiest way to avoid it while still earning good money is to move to another country where they won't care about it.

Yes, a sane, balanced view of the situation. Almost as sane and balanced as Julian's.

Try 18 months, not four years.

What deeper implications of travelling into Sweden, exactly? You mean escaping the UK's we'll-give-you-anyone-you-ask-for extradition treaty with the USA? I can see how that would be a problem for him, yes.