The point isn't really the timing of Elop's arrival - it's what Elop did with the situation. Going whole hog on Windows when Android was clearly the most successful alternative to iOS was pure Elop. It was a big bet with two possible outcomes:

      1. Success - in which case Nokia has a headstart on becoming just another producer of Windows phones (i.e. first mover in a replay of PC commodification). After all, if they succeeded, then Samsung and the rest would be right behind them.
      2. Failure - in which case Nokia is a cheap Microsoft acquisition.

Either outcome could've suited Elop. Neither was particularly great for Nokia.

The third option was to build Android phones. In that case, they'd at least be entering an arena with an established market for their products. So they'd be executing the 'success' scenario above - and competing with Samsung and the rest. On the merits of their hardware and any popular goodies they could add to their flavor of Android. And without having to develop a market singlehandedly just to get to the starting line.

Low interest is the way that central banks are trying to compensate for governments run by ideologues who continue to (pretend to) believe that 'austerity' and tax cuts will solve all economic problems. It amounts to trickle-down economics at its worst, but that's fine with the liars who got that ideology enacted into law in the first place - and are managing to keep it locked in through lies and obstructionism.

Yes, the public has 'spoken', and the Internet shall be ad-supported and otherwise 'free'. That doesn't mean that internet advertising has to be as intrusive as possible - just because it can be. Certain kinds of internet advertising is probably effective enough without tracking your every move. Even Google was pretty good - and financially successful - when it simply tracked your search queries and used aggregated data to produce good search results. The results may be marginally 'better' (i.e. personalized) today, but that's got plusses and minues. In any case, I wonder how much more revenue personalized searches generate for Google than before. You still have to click on the ads for them to make their money...

As far as other sites go, I imagine they're all sitting on huge troves of tracking data that they can't begin to figure out a use for - except maybe to sell it to somebody else which Google itself does not do, btw.

But my question is - how much cheaper is it than other, perhaps safer (or even just safer-sounding) materials. Obviously extracting natural gas is a hugely profitable business - but do we really have to roll over and accept whatever methods they want to use, just to make their business as profitable as possible. That's where regulations are supposed to come in - to make sure that the trade-offs between maximum profitability and public safety are forced rather than counting on industry to make them out of, oh, concern for safety. I imagine some of you will start from an assumption that any regulation is going to be excessive and unnecessary. So let me call bullshit in advance.

You're giving your readers a lot of credit for understanding satire ;-)

What I want to know is why they use this shit in fracking at all. I assume it's because it makes the process more efficient - but how much more? If it's not by a huge amount - say 50% or more - then maybe it's worth using safer materials in the fracking process and having the resulting natural gas cost somewhat more. Currently, I think, drillers don't even have to disclose what they pump into the ground. Why should fracking get a pass on safety? Our cars, etc. have mandated safety features that make them cost more. You may argue over whether some specific feature is worth the cost - but that's what democracy's for. And you may say we don't have much of a functioning democracy any more, but that kind of defeatist attitude does not constitute an answer.

To the extent that Ubuntu provides a stable enough base for distros like Mint to base off of - giving users the confidence that Ubuntu-targeted apps will work on Mint as well, Ubuntu's done its job admirably. If only by making it possible for other distros to install on UEFI based machines (with or without secure boot - plenty of distros are still only just getting there).

Mir is problematic, and if it introduces enough incompatibility to Ubuntu packages, that could force other distros to re-fork off of something else (or continue on based on a pre-Mir base). Hopefully, Wayland will become viable long enough before Mir does that the two efforts can ultimately merge - not necessarily the code bases, but support for whatever functionality Canonical thought it needed that Wayland didn't provide. Or at least, the GNOME and KDE bits that will define most Wayland or Mir apps can get support from both camps to make everything 'just work' - perhaps even better than X11 does today...

Pretty silly. You installed the free antivirus program you wanted and then uninstalled it because you were mad that they included Chrome - which possibly was their way to pay the bills, since you weren't paying for their primary product. Why the fuck didn't you just uninstall Chrome and be done with it? Or simply leave it there and not use it. Sheesh. If you want everything for free, why don't you just admit the Linux is better aligned with your mindset - except, apparently, for the fact that you seem to be a Microsoft fanboi who's mad that the 'evil' Google wants to take away your precious IE.

The most recent one that totally ignores the "well regulated militia" part of the amendment and decrees that gun ownership is an absolute right. It's not as though that clause is some kind of a verbal tic. It's half of the text. And it obviously intends to provide context - in this case a United States that had no standing army. But the selective 'originalists' on the Court's right wing like to play dumb when it suits them.

Kind of like insisting that "money is speech" is the highest value - when the opposing values of "one person, one vote" democracy (not to mention the prevention of outright corruption) certainly deserve at least equal consideration.

Correction - doesn't override the absurdly expansive reading of the 2nd amendment by the current, highly political, Supreme Court.

The N4 back comes off - it just takes some doing. I learned that when the stupid glass back on mine shattered. But it has a new back now and is still going (realatively) strong...

I have a G2 - also a really nice device. But the notification light is so bright, it lights up the whole bedroom at night. If anybody reading this knows of a way to dim it (not just mute it at night), please comment.

You see... That's exactly how they do it. 'Threatened' gun rights are a red herring - used to sew up a large chunk of the electorate and get them to vote for corporate interests over their own. And 'gun rights' are, to a large extent, the corporate interest of gun and ammo manufacturers, by the way. The proportion of the electorate that needs gun rights to extend to the building of personal arsenals is minuscule (well, maybe not that minuscule), but the outrage machine manages to get the whole gun loving cohort on board.

So, assuming you favor net neutrality, and are reading this thread because you want it preserved, you might want to think about your own thought process in attempting to paint Democrats as manipulating fear of gun crime as somehow equivalent to pandering to 'gun rights' purists. The Democrats' agenda is far less corporatist than the Republicans'. The fact that it's hard to get the money out of politics - and the presence of that money makes the two parties act more similarly than they otherwise would - doesn't make them the same. It just proves that the system (money and all) is corrupt. Who do you think is more likely to fix that...?

Eventually, ISP's are going to come up with 'pay per gigabyte' pricing that will solve this in a better, fairer way. Net neutrality is vital - certainly for protecting access to all content. But unlimited access to unlimited amounts of data is not really net neutrality. I'm fine with watching Netflix at 720P if I can save money on my broadband bill. Someone else may want 4K streams and be willing to pay for it. The internet will survive this.

Indeed. But maybe we should choose our battles better. Copyright extension - essentially to infinity - seems silly, but the harm from it pales next to the damage being done by the patent system. Bad patents prevent you from innovating on your own ideas - that, yes, have some basis in what came before (what doesn't?). Copyrights just prevent you from 'free as in beer' access to something that we all agree isn't ours. Sure, there have been stupid cases - like Oracle's insistence to exclusive access to Java API's based on copyright. But for the most part, life and technological and cultural progress would go on fine with Mickey Mouse the exclusive property of the Disney corporation for the next millennium.

I - along with most typical slashdotters - am in knee jerk opposition to the Trans Pacific Partnership. Why? Because of the threat that US patent standards will be extended worldwide. And the primary reason corporate lobbyists have inserted themselves into the process is more likely copyright protection. Music and movie studios - and yes, Microsoft and their ilk - want to stop content piracy in China, and other places where copyrights are not respected. I can understand that. Much as I like getting music for free, I get that it's a form of stealing. From what I gather, the TPP has now become so laden with corporate giveaways, that it may not be fixable. But a good trade agreement is certainly possible. It would certainly be better to level the environmental playing field by improving standards in China than by imposing least common denominator standards in the West. Same for worker protections. And I'm willing to believe that the TPP even attempts to do such things. But extending US patent standards to the rest of the world is least common denominator in reverse. Bad enough IMO to scuttle the deal.