I think people should ask themselves when the last time Valve seriously looked into updating the Source engine on Windows.

The last major support shift was for Mac OS X, when they pushed Steam onto that OS. Clearly, they are looking into supporting Linux now and they are tweaking code to get the most out of it.

When was the last time that the Steam engine even needed this kind of look on Windows? 2006 or 2007? As someone pointed out in a post further down: OpenGL is beating DirectX 9. Windows 8 is about to push out very real performance improvements, as well as DirectX 11.1.

Besides, when talking about 270+ fps, there are probably a lot of other things that should be looked at rather than pushing more wasted cycles onto your CPU/GPU for rendering another frame that you, as a person, can't even perceive it happens 9-times over.

While amusing, I thought about this during the WP8 announcement. Prior to WP8, everyone said "Windows Phone 7" during announcements. Everyone except Nokia at their big announcement. They specifically called out "Windows Phone."

Even more importantly, if they really wanted too, they could keep their WP7 lineup alive for as long as they see fit because they have the ability to make changes. In doing so, they could maintain their faithful customers and continue on with WP8.

And without a second thought about quality assurance to make sure that each phone wasn't filled with lead, coated with mercury, and broken immediately.

Between this story and the notion that Facebook, a corporation that produces nothing, employs almost nobody, and whose users are not their customers is now worth >$100billion, and the fact that the young founder of Facebook is has greater net worth than the bottom 1/5th (!) of the entire US population, I think a picture of an economic system in its death throes starts to take shape. I can't see how it can last much longer, nor can I think of a reason why it should.

If today's incredibly disappointing trading is anything to go by, then we are about to see Facebook worth far less than the $100 billion amount that it is today, come next week when the underwriters are not forcing the price to stay at, or above $38 per share.

I think we're at a point where we simply disagree, but I do want to throw in my last two cents (and I'll even let you have the last word if you want).

I don't think this is Apple's way of trying to prevent people from making money. On the contrary, I think it's about both parties making money. However, it's most importantly about Apple making money, and scarily, it's about Apple making all of the profit. Receiving a 30% cut of anything beyond an in-game, all-digital good is almost certainly going to eat up the profit margin for any real business.

And all of that just so that you can provide the same experience as a company's existing website? As a business, I think this is Apple abusing its position, but I do not believe that Apple qualifies as a monopoly (so no one can slap them for it). I think my point is driven home by the fact that Apple does not even let apps link to a website allowing users to purchase something outside of the Apple system, nor can they even reference how to do it within their app. With that in mind, I would say that that provides an incredibly broken system when a company refuses to give Apple a 30% cut, or when a company simply cannot afford to do it even if they wanted to join. The app loses expected functionality, and it creates a poor experience across the board.

It is Apple's App Store, and therefore they do make the rules about what gets hosted. But this boils purely down to greed. Apple should provide such an API, and I still think they are free to take whatever percentage cut (although I still think 30% is ridiculous at best), but they should also provide an API that allows the collection of payment information in a consistent, and similarly compelling manner. Considering how generic of a process the collection of a credit card is, they could easily do it. The only reason that Apple refuses to do it is pure greed while protecting themselves from any-and-all competition at the same time considering that both PayPal and Google Checkout could both swoop in and provide a much more attractive model that is also consistent for users across apps, while actually enabling a company to make a profit from a sale.

And I do not want you to get the impression that I hate Apple. I have owned multiple iPhones, and I own a Sandy Bridge-based MacBook Pro (which is still the current generation, for now). I love their hardware quality, as well as their support, and I even like the ecosystem of apps. Even with that, I still think that this is overstepping by a large and unreasonable amount (referencing the idea that you must go through them, not even the amount that they take).

You can now continue on your fanboy rage tirade.

That statement could not be much more ironic given the phrasing of your entire post.

The US cannot surprise a nation that has nuclear-tipped ICBMs scattered across its massive surface area, along with their nuclear submarines around our coast, with a first strike. They will always have the ability to respond in kind, even if it is just to erase us from the planet, as we would be theoretically doing to them.

The US missile defense is to protect against rogue generals, and rogue nations. There is no hope, nor expectation that it will protect against an onslaught from Russia.

Wait, what? Nokia just released their first Windows Phones in November 2011, neither were released in the United States. At some point they released the Lumia 710 in the United States, and it sold pretty well, but it was on the smallest of the big carriers: T-Mobile. Now, Nokia has added the Lumia 900 to AT&T and it is supposedly selling pretty well (I live near a Microsoft Store, and I can honestly say that the store itself has been recently more popular than the Apple Store in the mall, but that mostly has to do with location within the mall; I have also seen a lot of people walking out with new Lumia 900 phones).

Anyway, all of this is to say that you have no idea what you are talking about when you are talking about financial reporting. Two phones are not going to save a company, and at least two bad quarters were expected. Nokia is just now getting back into the swing of things, and people looking for instant success are both naive and represent what is wrong with investors in general these days.

Otherwise, Motorola Mobility going with that "Android" platform is really proving to be a sinking ship, right? Because they've had two bad quarters too.

Learn a thing or two about corporate financial reporting.

If you drove a Lexus, then why did you switch to the Yugo? The only serious answer that you can give is that the old-Lexus brand that you knew had failed.

There are plenty of flavors of Linux, BSD and even Mac OS X if that floats your boat. Being "stuck" with Windows is your own fault, or you if it has applications that you require, then whose fault is that (hint: not the company that wrote the operating system)?

WP7 does allow apps to run in the background. It does not allow apps to access certain APIs while running in the background, such as VOIP controls (e.g., Skype). That's not too dissimilar from what Apple does on iOS.

In the first case, that's if you do not have a very good motion sensor. In the second case, that's if you know that you need to try and avoid such an attack.

Not to attack the idea, but wouldn't a randomized keyboard slow down your typing as you search for the keys, thus enabling the shoulder-surfer to watch as you struggle? I agree that would likely beat the Malware assuming that the malware reading your motion sensors can't also figure out what keyboard is being displayed.

I would suspect that that's one reason for the patent purchase, but I would also expect that the other is because Yahoo is already suing them for patent infringement.

That legitimately surprises me. I wonder if it actually needs the memory, or if it is an oversight on their listing (as it's listed as a Known Issue)?

It mostly surprises me because the Tango-based phones are destined for China and India where a lot of people use Skype. Being able to sell it as the go-to phone for Skype would have been a smart move on their part, but Microsoft has never been known to have good marketing. Hopefully whomever is to blame wakes up and notices.

This is one limitation of the background tasks. It's not a hurdle that they cannot overcome, and it's not like they will not overcome it considering that Skype is their subsidiary now.

Unlike your Android phone (leap of faith there), Windows Phones do not yet need a dual core processor, nor do I expect it suddenly to this Fall even though it is expected to have them at that point. The applications run just fine on a single core, as does pretty much everything on iOS (oh no, the iPhone 4 has a single core! Only the iPhone 4S has a dual core). As for the screen resolution, I have yet to see a real problem with 800x480 other than marketing, although I fully expect higher resolutions to appear with WP8.

The HTC HD2 would have provided instant fragmentation to the WP7 platform. It had different hardware buttons, which would have mitigated any idea of button standards instantly, and also its memory capacity actually varied by carrier. Finally, the WP8 upgrade is currently only a rumor spawned by people that are frequently wrong about the platform (most recently Paul Thurott).

Now, as a Windows Phone owner, I do agree that it will be terrible if they were to drop support for all WP devices. I would absolutely leave the platform for the same reason that I will not go to Android anytime soon: I am not going to pay for a 2 year contract for a phone that loses support before the contract ends, which has so far happened to every non-Nexus Android. Microsoft claimed that they were not going to play that same game, and I have to give them the benefit of the doubt because they have made good on their word so far (only the carriers have blocked updates, not Microsoft, and Microsoft has them freely available so that I can download the diffs and force them without having to root my phone or otherwise void my warranty). It's on them whether or not I lose faith in the platform, and take my fanboy-crush to a different platform (most likely iOS); I doubt I am alone. Fortunately, I think it would crush Nokia to lose support for the phones that they have just released, so there is very little chance that this rumor is even true.