Without any assurances from Microsoft, it seems like one couldn't even guarantee the security of the Nokia apps and drivers running on Windows Mobile.

Did Google do the math when they bought Motorola? Did HP do the math when they bought EDS/Autonomy? Did Sears do the math when they bought KMart? Did bank of America do the math when they bought CountryWide? M&A is a very risky business. The only people I've seen who think this was a good deal are the financial pundits who REALLY don't understand technology. Listening to them talk, they sound like they don't even know what WhatsApp is. I just don't see 19 billion of value in this purchase.

I routinely call to "cancel" my internet. I mention the high costs and my inability to pay the costs as my reason. I'll often spout off whatever discount rate the competitor will offer for new customers. I've never had my ISP not offer me a discount. I was paying half price for AT&T Uverse ($32 a month for 18mbps). Regular prices of internet service here is a scam. Just make sure you set a reminder on your calendar to call them back when your 6-12 months are up. And never agree to a contract that goes beyond the length of the discount.

How much non-3rd party software does a Nokia phone ship with? I mean, if you aren't including the OS on the phone as Nokia's responsibility, than what exactly are they responsible for?

Am I the only person who can't understand why anyone in their right mind would pay 1 billion, (let alone 19 billion) for a company that pretty much just does IM for phones? I mean, there are a ton of instant messengers out there. Most have good phone integration. Whether this will break even for Facebook or not is a given. It wont. They may not loose their shirt, but there is no way they are going to make their 19 billion back from a company with 40 million in revenue. The math doesn't add up. Even if paying ~$40 a user was a good move for a company like FB, there is no reason people will stay on WhatsApp if they don't want to. It's not like FB where leaving can be tricky if you have a lot of content there you don't want to loose access to. You aren't going to see a mass exodus of FB, but within a matter of months, you could in WhatsApp. Having said that, the creators of WhatsApp get massive props. Creating a platform that does something that 50 other competitors have and are already doing, and then selling it for 19 billion dollars is massively impressive. With these numbers, I'm going to have to reevaluate Blackberry's stock price. Valued currently at under 5 billion, BBM has to be worth at least 10 billion by itself. Which means the stock should double in the next few days, as Google looks to acquire BBM to compete with Facebook.

Just doing a quick google search, it looks like the average single person on welfare can receive ~$300 a month. That's not including food stamps, medicaid, or housing assistance. Not to mention that a LOT of people living off welfare are defrauding the system by hiding assets, income, or additional support they receive from others. Around here, it's not uncommon for a woman to go on welfare/food stamps/medicade/housing support, while her live in boyfriend goes to work at some retail location. All of her government aid pays for the majority of the bills, while his income is enough to afford the luxuries. Around fifteen years ago, I worked at a national fast food chain while I was in highschool. I had a coworker who had a brand new F150 with all the bells and whistles. I had another coworker who was driving a brand new Caddilac. After I got to know them a bit, I found out the truth on how they could afford the cars. When you only make $7-8 an hour, it's hard to imagine how someone could afford a $35-50k car. It's not hard to spend $400 a month on your car payment, when your house, food, and utilities are all covered from your girlfriends government assistance.

How can a company as big as Foxconn think that the way to improve smartphone sales in Indonesia is to start mass producing Blackberries in Indonesia? Can't the Indonesians just skip Blackberries and go straight to Android? I'd recommend iPhones, but I doubt many Indonesians, living on $4,000 a year, could afford a phone that costs about two months wages. http://www.nationmultimedia.co...

I don't think I would install an application called StealthBit either. Sounds like an accident waiting to happen.

We can't even get them to include backup cameras in all cars, something that's been required in ALL new cars for several years. How do you expect this to ever be installed in every car?

Fishing, no. I've had plenty of fresh ocean salmon in my travels in Alaska and the west coast. Certainly there is some taste difference, but I doubt many people could put their finger on the difference unless given both at the same time.

Having done some Salmon fishing in Michigan, I have no clue what you're talking about. Lake Michigan Salmon is good stuff. The only nasty stuff I've seen is when you go river fishing trying to catch Spawning Salmon. The fish are going to die, and are certainly not very good tasting. Most people don't keep the ones they catch, and the ones that are "nice" are typically smoked to improve the flavor.

I think he's refering to the emergency city manager that Snyder put in to work out the financial crisis. Basically, the people in Detroit are pissed that after 5 decades of voting for democrats who ran their budget into the ground, the Governor decided that putting in a Democrat emergency manager wasn't the best idea. While I don't necessarily agree with everything Snyder has done, this certainly was not a bad thing. Change was necessary, and I don't think it would have happened any other way.

I don't have a problem with DRM, as long as I can use the content when I want, how I want, were I want, and with whom I want. I don't mind that the content is locked to me. It just needs to be treated like an asset, not a license. If I buy 1000 ultraviolet/Vudu/Flixter movies, and then I die, I want my wife or children to inherit my content. If I want to give a movie to my friend, I should be able to do that. I'd be willing to pay MORE for my content, if I had assurances that I could do more. For instance, I recently converted ~100 movies from disc to digitial using Vudu's service. They had a 50% off promotion, and I thought it was worth $1-$2.50 a disc to concert stuff. I get to keep my discs, and now I don't have to backup my data to hard disk like I had been doing. A single Bluray converted and compressed is typically still 10-15GB in size. To me, it's worth paying $1 to not have a 10-15GB file sitting on my servers hard disks. Sure, I have 4x2TB drives (6TB accessible) and can store a ton, but that storage is not free. Now I can access my movies on my phone, tablet, computer, HTPC, PS3, etc. I can also log in to my Vudu account at a friends house, and we can watch a movie in better than DVD quality. To me, that's worth paying a small fee. Having said that, I wouldn't buy a movie from Vudu. I want the physical disk. I want the backup in case Vudu (or UV) goes belly up. I don't want to be at the mercy of some company, with $1000's invested in content. There has to be ownership. There has to be an exit plan for the service provider. To me, UV solves some of those problems, but not all of the,.

So your argument is that you aren't going to buy a device to stream content to your TV because you don't want to jump through "hoops" to be a customer. So, which DVD did you buy that came with a free DVD player? How is buying a Roku different than buying a DVD player? If you'd rather that Netflix charged you an extra $5 a month and provided a player, than maybe you'll get somewhere. No place truly offers things for free.

Couldn't the same be said about you?