Are you sure that you have a credit card and not a debit card? While, in the past, I've had credit cards without chips (of course), I've never had a credit card without raised personal information (CC number, Name, expiration date). If nothing else, that was needed even before magnetic strips were in use and is still a fallback in some situations when connectivity goes down for the store.

My debit card, on the other hand, is flat, like yours.

It's difficult to say that's what they're doing.

Google offers its storage space in return for serving you ads when you use their services. And they also have access to all your data, which makes it possible for them to learn about your lifestyle and, in turn, again serve you (better targeted) ads. So they probably make some money on it. They also give you opportunity to purchase additional quantities of capacity.

Microsoft, on the other hand, bundles their One Drive with Windows purchase. So you could say that you bought the capacity when you purchased your Windows license. You could also say that this is one way for MS to keep you tied to their products, which will make you purchase another license in a few years. And, again, you can buy extra space if and when you need it.

Dropbox is a standalone product. They have in the past (I don't see those offers anymore) partnered with phone vendors, to lure you in. The idea was that the convenience of having 20 or 30 GB of space (or whatever amount they "gave" you), would force you in paying them, after the honeymoon was over.
So far I haven't met a single person who did this. So they are probably doing something a bit wrong here.

I don't quite understand your line of thought here.
Let's suppose that emails account for all your business data traffic. If you can track your business email data consumption, by having a dedicated app for business emails, then what does time matter? Your phone provider bills you based on how much data you consume, not based on how long you're connected. Your phone is connected all the time anyway.

The issue we're discussing here has to do with employer reimbursing you for expenses that you incur with your private phone, while working for them. Exactly how long you work every day isn't really relevant in this argument, since it doesn't change your expenses.

Why would that be better?

Also, it's not really a problem itemising calls and defining what were business calls and how much they cost. Data usage may be slightly more complicated, but even that could be managed. You could, for instance, have a separate email client for business emails and then track data usage of that client.

I don't know where you work, bur with my job work is about getting things done and if costs are justifiable, then they are justifiable. At the end of the day, if I won't be able to check my work email then the boss will have to wait for my reply, not me.

Couple of problems with your suppositions:
1. What would be a problem in regards of taking a copy of contacts with you, when you leave? Contacts are probably not only on a phone. And what would prevent someone from sending them (one-by-one or a whole address book) to some backup location? Same goes for emails.
I'm not talking about legality of such action. Just the technical possibility.

2. Who says wipe is all-or-nothing? Even on my old Symbian Nokia there was a possibility of wiping just email account and business contact book remotely. I have no clue what you can do on an iDevice, but on Android you can also be selective, if you wish.

For me, having two phones makes sense only for two things:
- Keeping all the expense-related things clearly separated in regards with private/business usage.
- Having the ability to turn off business phone while off the clock and actually have some time off.

That would be one hell of a career...

Regarding the missile system:
There's no doubt that it's of Russian manufacture. But why are you so sure it's Russian, as in "it belongs to Russian military at the present"?
These same systems are currently in hands of Ukrainian government, the Ukrainian "rebels" (or whatever they're supposed to be called) as well as the Russia itself. I do not think that there is a lot of doubt that BUK system was where the missile came from. And in my opinion it's also fairly likely that it was the rebels who are responsible for the shooting. But that is my opinion and I don't think there are lot of actual facts to support it.
Video may show a system missing a missile, but apart from that, everything else is a lot of speculation.

Stealling deprives revenue.

Copying deprives potential revenue and may, in fact, boost revenue of a certain product.

Take an example a popular TV show:
Someone may ("illegally") download a few of the episodes of it, based on the advice of a friend. They love it and from that point onward they watch it on TV. The show gets another regular viewer and the creator gets all the revenue associated with it. See what the HBO has to say about GoT pirating.
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/...

I don't know how it is with video and audio content.

But, according to a previously published article, about 37% of Steam games never get played. And it's probably safe to assume they don't get downloaded either...
http://games.slashdot.org/stor...

Surely the "ease of travel" would not be limited if UK was not in EU anymore? As a matter of fact UK is not in the Schengen area. That means that you actually still have to use the passport while traveling anywhere, while the rest of us "UE-ians" :-) only need it for UK (I'm of course exaggerating, there are other EU countries that are not part of Schengen area either).
As a matter of fact, I can travel without passport to several countries that are NOT part of EU or Schengen, such as Bosnia, and Serbia. Of course this has to do with bilateral agreements between my country and those two. But surely a well established country, such as UK, would maintain same level of access as it had so far?

It looks like the whole UK as part of EU is causing lots of issues on both sides.

In general I'm for the union, but if a single country can keep on causing problems for majority and if that single country is genuinely displeased with common rules by which others would like to abide, then re-evaluation might be in order.

Are there any benefits that a random British person could point out, that are the result of UK being in the EU?

That may be your experience, but it's not something that I've seen since the times of Office XP.

I develop lots of training materials that go through people on all sides of the planet in their revision/editing process. It's not very unusual for some to have Office 2008, others 2010 and some 2012. In all cases I do not remember formatting problems to occur. And that includes different regional settings and so forth.

And I'm not even sure what you meant with the printer drivers...

One of the main reasons (or THE main reason) for why MS is still leading in the end-user environment is the Office.

Even though it may be hated by a lot of people for any number of reasons it is the standard. Why? Because FOSS simply is not compatible enough with it. If it's because of the fact that MS uses proprietary formats or because FOSS solutions could not be bothered to be compatible enough does not matter at the end of the day. If I can not use Libre Office or Open Office (or anything else) to edit Word-generated documents and return them without formatting disasters, I cannot use anything else than MS Office products.
End of story.

You may argue that others should switch to FOSS as well. Well, until they do, my livelihood depends on whether or not they will accept my products (documetns, presentations, spreadsheets,...). And if they don't then I simply don't have the alternative.

Company giving you bad cell/internet service is considered more important (and as a result worse) than company that on a global scale potentially causes health problems and effectively attempts to control which food you'll be allowed to eat?

Priorities?

So, this method requires quite a bit of physical access to the ATM. You have to attach a phone (why smartphone, by the way?) to the actual ATM controller.

In my opinion this begs a whole set of other security questions first....