We are taking about students circumventing internet filters. That means they don't give a shit about policies... Why would they turn in their phones?

I do hate when yahoo "hides" things? Have you recently tried to download an attachment in the webmail?

Same argument can be made about MS Windows. It's... free.. you can download it anywhere, to any computer and use it.

It's an equivalent to knowing that ip xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx hacked you. (Welll you could extract more information with investigation... but who would fund it?)

You say that the normal user, who can press the "accept button" on the permissions form, couldn't understand that by unchecking a box, a particular permission is denied?
Don't worry, put the scary check boxes on an "advanced" option, so that no app is broken by mistake.

If you started with vi, you where doing something wrong or, at the time it was the only option, no modern IDE existed.
Either that, or you started with vim, that has all the things you say it's lacking and is the furthest you can get from a "basic thing" for programming.

Do you use group chatting to communicate with european firends?
The main feature is group chatting... It's not new, but's the first time i've seen it adopted widely, more than in facebook im.
So you end with a chat group per each of your social groups. The groups are what incentive exchanging media assets.

IM as in instant messenger? That's what whats app is...
or IM as in AIM? Do US people still use that?

Althogh your analisys is correct, you crearly don't know how whats app is used...
It's a multimedia private chatroom, so, like anything elese, is used for porn and lolcatz.

On the login protocol there is a credential expiration date.
I do know of some users of alternative clients that couldn't log in after the expiration and had to pay.

Of course it's a ridiculous fee compared to what some telcos charge for SMS, but in places where international CC aren't ubiquitous, it's a real pain in the ass to make electronic payments (Yeah, outside US not only SMS aren't free, you may live without a CC).

So in whats app business model, you need to know if the person you are charging will be able to pay you even if he want's to.
Despite their promise, eventually facebook will make the service free an merge it with facebook. At least that's what MS did with skype.

AFAIK only iShiny users have to pay for the app, the android one is free but you need to pay their subscription fee.
Android users get a 1 year free subscription that can, under some circumstances, be extended also for free. If you pirate the iphone app, you also get the 1 year free subscription. If you don't pirate it, the subscription fee is included in the app price.
Also I think this free / non free renovation is decided upon IP geolocation.
You pay for the service, not the app. As your user id is your phone number, and other users find you by that id, after a year of use you are forced to pay. Otherwise you'd better use another service.

Their phones, like every other, are chinese / (insert Asian semiconductor manufacturer of preference)

No, the objective is to gain a critical mass of developers, and to provide a sort of beta tests for chinese manufacturers.
That makes keeps you relevant (to the industry, not the users), and gives you a business chance with the chinese folks.
The only reason it's so hard to port OS's , is because the binary drivers. Manufacturers shouldn't have that issue.

It's more usable, because it's quicker to press a special key (windows key, probably), and a random location on a BIG window, than testing your fine motor skills, positioning your mouse over the window border.
It's also the only functional reason to have window decorations at all.

I won't allow you that! gnome and kde started fucking their users before before it became mainstream.