Could be encryption export restrictions (yes, I knwo the devices were made in China in the first place and are available everywhere else anyway so the restriction has no real effect, but that are still legal restrictions).

There may be other trade limiting legislation that is relevant.

She could be bypassing import/export taxes and other such.

Getting less iPhone specific: she may have been intending to use the phones to pay for other illegal products/services, high priced items are sometimes used as part of attempts to launder money associated with drug and people transportation.



Nothing that really warrants a tasering, though if she was getting overly argumentative they could claim (however disengenuously) that they reacted in fear that she might become violent and put other members of the public in danger.

There are two thigs that make it costing more than Windows unsurprising.

Firstly the cost of Windows to manufacturers like Dell is much much much lower per unit than the likes of you or I would pay personally, and they get a kick-back for every bit of crapware they install on it for you which could easily make the Windows+crap solution zero cost. The crapware is not available for Linux, so they lose that couple of $/unit.

Secondly, if they have done as much work as "the result of a skunkworks project to optimise the open-source OS to run on Dell projects, to create better laptops for developers" might imlpy, then that sort of work to any decent quality level costs a fair amount in experienced man-time. Most chipset/device manufacturers produce their own Windows drivers that are (eventually, usually after a few revisions) fast and stable, but produce very little or nothing at all for other OSs such as Linux. This means that anything not yet fully supported and optimsed by the mainstream kernel woudl need work from Dell's team - and it may not be easy work as often public documentation for such things is sparce or otherwise lacking (or simply not available: they may have had to pay for access to some information).

This isn't about creaming money of us silly Linux people - it is about not doing work for nothing (which is fine for individuals and small groups who are making use of what would otherwise be spare time, but very difficult to get passed your shareholders when you are a publicly listed company).

As Windows gradually loses market share due to the number of devices (I'm including everything here, not just desktops and laptops where Windows is still very much king) running other options (Android, iOS, Linux, ...) the device support situation will hopefully change to the point where (at very least) good documentation is publicly available for most things.

Excellent, my evil island cloaking device is functioning perfectly. They'll never know my nefarious plans until they are too late to do anything about them!

But they also can't stop their customers making the GPL covered code available elsewhere once they have access to it, so releasing to their customers is effectively releasing to the world.

Unfortunately most of the general public think that because nothing really went wrong there was not a problem in the first place, and that it was all hyped up by the media. Some of this is the simple truth that it was over-hyped by the media who over-hype everything so people are growing desensitised, some of it is people not bothering to research their opinions or properly engage their critical thinking abilities.

Nope. Not just your browser. Your browser, your OS & some of its support libraries that many other apps may use.

Interesting fact: it isn't just the light that makes them scurry away adn hide. They can smell us, and find us quite disgusting (presumably an evolved survival reaction: avoid mammals as they'll either eat you or just stomp on you).

The supply deal between Samsung and Apple is already due to end (in 2014) IIRC, so Samsung are in a position to lose at most that. Chip manufacture is an expensive business, there are a fair few players in the mobile device market right now and Samsung don't have infinite production capacity - presumably they think they can make the same money (or more) using that finite resource to service other clients (including other parts of themselves), and do so without helping a competitor, they may even already have new contracts lined up ready.

My assumption is that Samsung could do better now. The contract must have room for price variance nor room for Samsung to walk away, but clauses that would allow Apple to walk away. If I'm right then what Samsung have done is simply demand Apply pay the going rate, which is higher right now than when their deal was first negotiated. They couldn't lose: either Apple agree and give Samsung what they want, or Apple walk away and Samsung get the same from others (or via equivalent saving by being able to make use of the manufacturing resource directly themselves).

I think that inconveniencing a competitor in another market probably didn't even come into it, other than inspiring a few humorous/ironic/what-ever notes on internal memos. This seems to be to be basic cost/benefit and "what the market will bare" stuff. If anything inconveniencing Apple would have made them think twice rather than make them more eager to cause disruption: being seen to deliberately inconvenience a partner, no matter what the provocation, can look bad and make other potential partners think twice about dealing with you.

I've gone a quick check of my memory, and it looks like QuickBasic and its descendants had those directives, which will be where I'll remember it from.

GPP was imprecise but almost correct. Unless I'm misremembering and assigning properties of other BASIC variants (I used a few variants way back then) to MS's that it didn't have, or course.

IIRC all unqualified variable names defaulted to integer type, adding the $ told the interpreter that a string type is required instead. But there existed directives to alter this behaviour, so for instance strings were the default. Something like "DEFSTR S-R" would make variables starting with S, T or R default to string (unless specifically set to something else by a trailing type indicator) from that point on.

I'm only one data-point, but a lot of people I know directly or indirectly seem to have switched away from MS's IM. It usually starts with using Facebook's IM for contacts that are on there then slowly logging into MSN/Live/what-ever less and less often until they don't bother at all (and reverting to mobile phone text messages for communicating with people who are not on facebook).

My phone will last two days between charges if it has to and I don't use it much other than it being on and idle. I can easily run the battery down in a few hours or talking or worse using to tether my netbook to the Internet - being able to put it on charge when I go to bed is not really useful when it is nearly drained due to long voice calls at two in the afternoon when I'm not near a convenient USB port. That doesn't happen often, but it does happen often enough and no doubt there are a great many people out there with more exciting lives than mine who find many more occasions when they are not near a convenient charging point.

I have a couple or portable battery chargers that help a lot for this though, so it isn't a completely unsolved problem even without spare batteries. Not very efficient of course, charging a battery via USB then using that battery to charge another battery later...

Of course a lot of people are more concerned about what will happen when the battery ages to the point of not holding enough charge at all any more. Personally I'm not so worried about that these days as improvements in battery technology make it far more likely that I'll have a replaced the phone before that becomes a major issue.

There are a couple of people/groups out there who are trying to take the highest quality versions and mix out all the changes. "Harmy's STAR WARS Despecialized Edition" is said to be the best by far at the moment - available on most moderately disreputable trackers.

Unless it varies by territory of course - I'm in the UK, perhaps the states will get it on the 3rd while we will need to wait 10 more days for the honour of paying through the nose[1] for one. [1] The equivalent of $383 at current rates for the 8Gb model through a mix of our tax regime and the manufacturer's desire to fleece us like everyone else does. Only 60% of the cost of a sim-free 8Gb iPhone 4 though, when my current smartphone fails (as it is threatening to do) or annoys me enough to warrant a short sharp visit to concrete-land I'll have to search out some comparative reviews.

The horses mouth suggests your assumption is correct: https://play.google.com/store/devices/details?id=nexus_4_8gb