East TX (think Houston) would be more appropriate, as it is truly a subtropical climate. West Texas is semi arid.

Replace "Microsoft" with the name of any company that suddenly got religion and is now working so hard to protect our privacy. How long did it take Google to finally get around using https and secure logins? A long fucking time, but we can't say anything about Google - because they do nifty shit like flying WiFi balloons in Africa. Meanwhile, Bill Gates is on the ground giving billions to eradicate disease -- something that actually improves peoples' lives in a meaningful way. But we still have to slam Microsoft, because Billy boy and his minions are so evil.

None of the major IT companies gave a rats ass about user privacy until Snowden leaked his information. FFS -- enough with the slamming Microsoft shit already, the 90's have been over for a long time now. Go back to trolling on The Verge or Apple Insider.

Maybe the idea of a self made guy building his own rocket company from the ground up and successfully competing against entrenched corporations makes for a compelling human interest story.

It sure as hell piques my interest.

I still have mine and it still runs linux just fine.

How many photo sharing apps do smart phones need? Remember what happened the last time we saw insane valuations for silly companies like this?

The place smart people go to get away from Tea Party gif spam on Facebook.

Odd you should mention that, but that is what I really think the cuts to welfare are intended to do. More reasons to place more people in prison.

Not only that, with Zuckerberg it is business disguised as altruism. The reason he really wants people online is because he wants their eyeballs on a Facebook feed.
Think of Gates however you want, but I personally think he deserves a huge amount of credit for doing real charity work.

Unlikely, but not by much...Yahoo beats Google in traffic for first time since 2011.

Not only was Motorola a money loser, Android loses money in other ways. Microsoft lovesAndroid. Not as much as Windows Phone, but because it gets patent royalties on every Android phone sold.

Sure now. But as we have seen countless times in the past, all it takes is changing the TOS and you are screwed. When times get harder for Google as it will, because it eventually happens to every tech company, see how long that policy lasts.
This is the same Google that tried to monetize everyones photos less than a week ago, and backed down (this time) because it pissed off so many people.
Google is great at promoting the rainbows and unicorn bullshit, I am just surprised so many still fall for it.

This is the ultimate objective of Google+, reducing the number of independant blogs and websites with G+ blogs and pages so keep margins high. With less independent bloggers and websites, ad revenue for these pages will shrink, and Google makes more money.
It is also why people like Mike Elgan and Robert Scoble shill the fuck out of everything Google does, because they know which way the wind is blowing. They are both full of shit, but they didn't get to where they are by not playing well with the big dogs. In return they get free shit from people, web hits and paid speaking gigs, and get to pretend like they are important.
I liked Google much more before they became scumbags like Facebook. Now you can't login to Gmail without it wanting you to create a Google plus account, want your phone number and other contact details. This behaviour along with sharing the email and contact lists to the NSA, getting caught lying about it, now trying to act like a good guy and lobby congress to protect privacy. If Google cared so much about users' privacy they would have lobbied before the Snowden leak.

Yes you are correct, which is why I am astounded people continually recommend Tor as if it is a privacy panacea.

...but in reality it still sucks because the NSA will be continue to log and sniff all traffic between the host and web site.

If you think that is dodgy ask his holiness about Federated Media. He is near the tops in my list of arrogant self-righteous media whores that say one thing and do another.